I witnessed BP’s last journey in Kathmandu, standing on the footpath of New Road in the company of many unknown others. Until that point in my life, I had never seen such a huge funeral procession.
The memory of that day was rekindled as I read several of BP’s books recently. During that exercise, two points struck me as worth for further reflection.
First, it has been 27 years since BP’s death. According to one projection made available by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 2003, Nepal’s current population is about 27.5 million. The same projection suggests that about 60% of this population, namely, almost 17 million Nepalis, were born after BP’s death. In other words, BP for this under-27 age group is history, not memory. Many of its members are likely to ask those of us who are above 40, “BP?...Ko BP?”
Second, there is really no good guide to the available writings on BP Koirala the politician, one that also takes into account BP’s own writings that have been published since the 1990s. Such a guide, it seems to me, would be especially necessary to attract those Nepalis born after 1982 to read more of and on BP. It would also be useful to students of 20th century Nepali history.
This simple guide is a makeshift solution born out of the recognition of these two points. Written for those under 27, it begins with a telescoped bio-sketch of BP before discussing the relevant readings. Please be warned that I am not an expert on BP Koirala and his writings, but a mere reader of texts by him and on him. Also, I am leaving out the guide to the literary writer BP for another occasion. Those in the know of items missed in this guide should participate in its enhancement through notes of their own.
Telescoped bio-sketch
BP was born on 8 September 1914 in Varanasi, India, as the first son of Krishna Prasad Koirala and his third wife Dibya. The senior Koirala was a successful businessman based in Biratnagar. When BP was barely three, his father mocked the autocrat Rana premier Chandra Shamsher by sending the latter a parcel containing the tattered clothes of a labourer. Enraged by this, Chandra confiscated the Koirala family’s property. The Koiralas spent the next 12 years in exile in north India, often in abject poverty.
It was during this period that BP got his first taste of mass politics, coming under the influence of Gandhi-led independence movement in India. In the early 1930s, he studied at the Banaras Hindu University, and between 1938 and 1942, became involved in the freedom struggle in India through the Congress Socialist Party. The British jailed him for the next three years in the company of several Indian political leaders.
In 1947, BP established the Nepali Rashtriya Congress. It and the separately established Nepal Prajatantrik Congress were merged in 1950 to form the Nepali Congress (NC). During 1950-51, NC led an armed rebellion against the Rana regime. After its success, BP became home minister, a post from which he resigned in November 1951. Shortly after that, he became President of NC. However, for much of the 1950s, BP was prevented from holding a ministerial post, first because of factional politics within NC, and later because King Mahendra was opposed to the idea.
In the first national elections held in early 1959, NC won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives envisaged by the 1959 Constitution of Nepal. The party’s leader, BP, then just 44, became the first elected prime minister of Nepal. However, before his government had adequate time to deliver on the promises the NC had made in its election manifesto, BP’s government was deposed by King Mahendra in December 1960. BP was imprisoned without charge, along with many of his colleagues, for the next eight years.
After being released in October 1968, he went into exile in India and led the anti-Panchayat struggle from there. BP returned to Nepal in December 1976 as part of his move of ‘national reconciliation’ only to be imprisoned again. He led the pro-multiparty camp during the 1980 national referendum held to decide the future of the Panchayat System.
Although the verdict went in favor of a reformed Panchayat System, BP considered the two million votes cast for multi-party option as “votes committed to democracy.” He promised to build upon “this committed support” and led his party’s boycott of the May 1981 elections to the Rashtriya Panchayat. Soon thereafter, his health deteriorated. When he died on 21 July 1982, he was survived by his wife Sushila (now deceased), their three sons, one daughter and a virtually rudderless NC party.
As intellectual Pradeep Giri has reminded us recently, BP’s political ideas were influenced by Gandhi, Marx and social democracy as interpreted by Indian political thinkers such as Acharya Narendradev, Rammanohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. He was also an active leader of the socialist movement in Asia. As the most towering politician of 20th century Nepal, BP ought to be remembered for his principled opposition to Rana and Shah autocracy and for his fearless search for democratic principles based on which he wanted to see Nepalis prosper.
Guide to readings
While in prison, both during the long years of imprisonment during the 1960s and after he returned to Nepal in 1976, BP wrote a lot. He wrote several volumes of short stories and novels, journals, and memoirs. While about half of his fiction was published during his lifetime, a lot of the other stuff was published posthumously. It is feared that several volumes of his journals which have not been published are either lost for good or kept hidden by people who were once close to him for reasons best known to them only.
Amongst BP’s autobiographical writings, there is Aafno Katha, first published 26 years ago by Chetana Sahitya Prakashan and reprinted at least thrice by Sajha Prakashan since 1993. This book only covers the first 20 or so years of BP’s life, most of it spent as a member of a family in exile in India. It is a fascinating read for not only insights into the formative years of BP but also for what it teaches us about social life and politics in Nepal and north India during the early years of the 20th century.
While BP did not write another volume of autobiography, he did record a narrative account of his life with the lawyer Ganesh Raj Sharma. This account was published as Atmabrittanta (1998). Its English translation by Kanak Mani Dixit was published in 2001. Its early pages retell the period covered in Aafno Katha, but most of it pertains to BP’s life and Nepali politics for the period between the early 1930s and the late 1960s.
Two volumes of BP’s journals have also been published. The first, Jail Journal (1997) in Nepali, is the journal BP kept during the first four years (December 1960 onwards) of his incarceration at Sundarijal jail. It contains both mundane details about how BP spent his days and important insights into his political thoughts. The second volume comes from BP’s second phase of imprisonment after his return to Nepal in December 1976. Originally written in English and first serialized in the Nepali Times, the Nepali text translated by Sushil Sharma was published in 2006 as Pheri Sundarijal. Here we can read about BP’s restlessness in the jail. It also includes his cameo commentaries on his fellow-traveler Ganesh Man Singh. This journal also documents how BP’s call for a national reconciliation failed to generate a rapprochement on the part of the then King Birendra.
There are numerous article-length biographical accounts of BP, some embedded in volumes of criticism of his literary works. However, I have come across only three book-length narrative biographies. The one in Nepali is Prajatantraka Mahan Senani Bishweshwarprasad Koirala written by Ramchandra Pokharel (1983). The two in English are BP Koirala: A Case Study in Third World Democratic Leadership by Shashi P. Misra (1985) and BP Koirala: Life and Times (1994) by Kiran Mishra. Among these, I found the one by Shashi Misra to be the most readable. The research is adequate for the time when it was done, and the writing simple. However, given the fact that many of BP’s texts have been published since these biographies were written, a fresh biography that is research-wise exhaustive has become necessary.
Many volumes of interviews given by BP have been published. Most of them, unfortunately, are not easy to get hold of. Among them, I would recommend two: Melmilapko Sarta Rastriyata ra Prajatantra (1981) and Democracy Indispensable for Development (1979). Also major portions of two books by the late Bhola Chatterji include his interviews with BP: Palace, People and Politics: Nepal in Perspective (1980) and B.P. Koirala: Portrait of a Revolutionary (1982, reprinted in 1990). The latter was also translated into Nepali by Gyanchandra Acharya, Prahlad K Prasai, Rudra K Nepal, and Mukti N. Bhatta as B.P. Koirala: Ek Krantikari Vyaktitva (1994).
For beginners, the above will easily amount to a full season’s readings. For those who want to read more, they could venture into B.P.’s political writings, only a fraction of which have been collected in volumes. Among them I would recommend four: Nepali Congresska Char Dasak (Bhag Ek) edited by Narhari Acharya (1996); B.P. Vad edited by Jeevanchandra Koirala (1997); Raja, Rastriyata ra Rajniti edited by Ganesh Raj Sharma (2006), and Bishweshwarprasad Koirala Rajnitik Abhilek edited by Pradeep Giri (2009).
There is an overlap of items included in these volumes, and for those who have time to read only one of them, I would recommend the last volume which is the most comprehensive of them. Giri’s introduction is noteworthy for both its subtlety and comprehensiveness, and it demolishes those who want to make opportunistic use of BP’s writings and utterances. It and the volume he has edited will prove to be the first stop for all future researchers on political BP.
Happy reading!