A character named Rishi Dhamala

KATHMANDU, Feb 4: No matter what the outcome of police investigation into his alleged affiliation with an underground criminal group, Rishi Dhamala will remain one of Nepal’s most talked-about journalists who alternately scaled heights of popularity and unpopularity; enjoyed almost unreserved access to Nepal’s who is who in a way few journalists do; and successfully made his mainstay, the Reporters´ Club, the most happening forum in the country.



Related Links:

• Audio tape-recording of Dhamala’s conversation


• Video of Dhamala at Kathmandu DAO


• Police allege Dhamala link with armed outfit


• Rishi Dhamala Remanded To Custody For 14 Days


• Police arrest Rishi Dhamala (Updated)

For the grassroots, Dhamala is big. In the villages, he is the unparalleled example of success in Nepali journalism.



For years, journalists have joked about how after offering tika in the Dashain festival, elders blessed them thus: “May you be a big journalist like Rishi Dhamala”. [break]



Other well known journalists have joked about how people in the districts have asked them whether they know Dhamala, and upon receiving a reply in the affirmative, stared back at them with mistrustful eyes that seemed to say: You a friend of Rishi Dhamala? No way!



Such anecdotes, whether factual or fictitious, added an aura of enigma to the man who was born in the remote Jyamrung village of Dhading district in 1975.



Dhamala ran away from his home when he was a student of class five in the village, said his long-time friend and editor of Annapurna Post Jiwendra Simkhada.



“I know him since he was studying in the Janaprabhat Secondary School in Kathmandu,” Simkhada said.



That was during the months leading to the People’s movement of 1990. With his trademark energy, Dhamala played an active role in mobilizing schools in Kathmandu during the movement. During that time, he worked for the daily, Samalochana, as a reporter and also as its paper boy.



Thereafter, he was appointed the manager of Surya monthly, and later helped bring out the Naya Pusta fortnightly. Thereafter, he was involved in tabloids such as Ghatana Ra Bichar, Drishti and Deshanter.



But it was the Reporters’ Club, which he started in 1998, that gave him widespread popularity and influence.



Simkhada said Dhamala went to People’s Campus, but could not say for sure how far he managed academically.



Dhamala is a familiar face in television not because cameras seek him. Rather, it is his knack of being in the right place – next to prime minister, minister, political leader or diplomat – at the right time that ensures him television coverage.






His idiosyncrasies are innumerable. Tabloids frequently carry stories with his by-line, but he actually wrote only a few of them, according to his old friend and journalist Kusum Bhattarai.



“He cannot write as well as professional journalists, and takes help from friends so that he does not miss out on the fundamental job of a journalist: writing. But he was always very strong in getting information,” Bhatttarai said.



Dhamala has always been more interested in the popularity and reach that a journalist can enjoy, rather than the task of writing news stories.



Bhattarai said popularity is Dhamala’s greatest weakness. “He has always wanted to make everyone happy, which is not always possible.”



That is probably why Dhamala accepted the Gorkha Dakshin Bahu from former King Gyanendra at the former palace and then headed straight to an anti-king protest during Gyanendra’s autocratic regime.



His invitation to then Home Minister Kamal Thapa to the Reporters´ Club, which Thapa used to the fullest to justify the former king’s autocratic moves, in the same period, was also widely criticized by his close friends.



After the reinstatement of parliament in 2006, Dhamala faced charges of receiving money from the royal government, which prompted some dailies to boycott the talk programs that are regularly organized at the Reporters´ Club.



“He might have made moral and professional compromises. But I still cannot believe that he had an involvement with a criminal group,” Bhattarai said.



“He is a product, a concoction, of Nepali journalism and politics. We all know that there are many Rishi Dhamalas in Nepal, leading successful lives in various sectors. Imprisoning one will not end the process and the social realities that give birth to people like him.”