Incomplete Revolution
The Challenge to Democracy in Nepal: A Political History
by T Louise Brown
Routledge, London and New York, 1996
239 pages, £ 40
ISBN 0 415 08576 4
Democratisation in Nepal has been a tardy and protracted zig-zag process. Since the fall of the Ranas in 1951, it has travelled from one triangular balance of mutually antagonistic and incompatible forces to another, from one partial and incomplete "revolution" in 1951 to another in 1990. T. Louise Brown, through her study The Challenge to Democracy in Nepal: A Political History, joins a large band of Subcontinental and Western scholars who have attempted to analyse and evaluate Nepal´s march towards democracy. Her point of departure from other studies lies in the emphasis placed on the events of the people´s "revolution" (Jan Andolan) of 1990 and thereafter, to which more than half the book is devoted.
Ms Brown´s narrative covers familiar ground in the first half of the book, which deals with the period from the end of the Rana rule until 1990. The only significant change during this period was the resurgence of the monarchy in place of a decadent and discredited Rana system. In the interim, the monarchy struggled to keep the democratic challenge suppressed, by strong-arm methods as well as by political and ideological manoeuvres. Such manoeuvres included not only alliances with and support mobilisation from the remnants of the Rana´s vested interests and stratified social structures and feudal institutions, but also from the Communist Party and its radical and extremist associates who did not want to see democratic forces, represented by the Nepali Congress, gain political ground in the Kingdom.