I was staying at the Annapurna Hotel then and Kishunji would come to the hotel and spend hours with me, talking, eating, and drinking. I remember an unusual episode one evening when he had come to my hotel room. As usual, he ordered a double-peg of whisky which the waiter brought to the room. Kishunji noticed that the serving didn’t look like a double-peg but the waiter insisted that it was. Still not believing, Kishunji asked the waiter to bring the measuring peg, which he did. Kishunji was right—the drink measured one-and-a-half peg and not two, which gave the waiter the shock of his life!
I left Kathmandu about a week later, in early January 1979, of which I had informed Kishunji some days earlier. At the airport, Mr Ram Hari Khatiwada—long time Congress cadre and Kishunji’s closest aide until his death Friday night-- met me to deliver a letter from Kishunji, to be given to Mr Koirala. When I returned to Washington a day later, I called Mr Koirala and informed him about my meeting with Kishunji and Mr Ganeshman Singh and told him that I have the letter for him from Kishun ji. Mr Koirala then told me to open the letter and read it to him on the phone which I did. It was an exuberant feeling to know that Kishunji and Mr BP Koirala were both so trustful of me!
Even though I lived thousands of miles away from Nepal, I enjoyed Kishunji’s company quite often, since our first meeting in 1978. This was made possible because of my official travels to Asian countries several times a year. Despite being short on time, I made special efforts to drop by in Kathmandu even for one evening and spend time with Kishunji, which later expanded to include Mr Yog Prasad Upadhaya, Mr Kuber Sharma, Mr Basu Rishal, Mr Govind Raj Joshi, Mr Ram Chandra Pokhrel and many other Congress luminaries. Never in my life had I wanted to be anything else other than an economist but politics was slowly getting into my bloodstream, owing largely to my closeness to Kishunji.
In spite of the distance between Washington and Kathmandu, I did what I could to organize efforts to push for democracy in Nepal, but I found it difficult gathering support. During a meeting with Kishunji and Girija Prasad Koirala (Girija Babu) I told them that people in Washington were scared of reprisals they would face if they participated in democratic activities and many of them even cut-off social contacts with me in an effort not to appear democratic. I remember Girija Babu shouting to me: “We are not so afraid of the government in Kathmandu. Why should they be thousands of miles away?” Kishunji, nonetheless, asked me to establish a forum for democracy. This I did in 1987, naming the forum: Committee for Democracy in Nepal, and it took many months to find five members to join in. The Committee played a key role organizing support in Washington for the on-going democracy movement in Nepal, including organizing out demonstrations outside the White House and the US Capitol in the Spring of 1990.
Saintly virtues, a squeaky clean image, absence of vanity, forbearance, and forgiveness shown to opponents are cherished by Kishunji’s followers and admirers and no other Nepali politician has come even close to him, in terms of honor and adulation the Nepali people have bestowed upon him.
Despite the close contacts I maintained with Kishunji over a number of years we never discussed politics until he became prime minister in 1990. He gave me the impression that he believed in democracy so much that progress and prosperity would come automatically with democracy. Nonetheless, during one of my visits to Kathmandu in late 1980s, I tried to engage him in a discussion about the economy: What he would do to speed up economic development and improve living standards if he became the prime minister? He kept mum for a minute and then replied that he would think about these things only after democracy gets restored. I pitied his innocence, but felt uncomfortable that a national leader of his stature did not have a concrete vision and imagination about the social and economic changes he would like to push forward when he gets a chance, which surely Kishunji did just a year later.
For my personal satisfaction--and in a manner of lessening my own guilt--I volunteered to draft a working paper on economic reform, to serve as an election manifesto for the Congress Party. This I submitted to Kishunji and Girija Babu in the summer of 1990.
I lost personal contacts with Kishunji after he became prime minister in April 1990, but I was confident that he was the right person for the job at the right time and that he would re-start the democratization process where BP had left off when he was forced out by the royal takeover 30 years earlier. That he would reconvene the prematurely dissolved parliament at that time; that he would tame the monarchy, like the Ranas did, more than 100 years ago; that he would move the royal family to Nagarjun Camp and convert Narayanhity Palace into a museum; that he would nationalize royal possessions like Soaltee and Annapurna hotels; and that he would arrest and persecute Panchayat leaders and their cohorts for corruption and abuse of power. There were abundant reasons for Kishunji to act in this way to perform his duties as the head of interim government that had been given almost absolute power to carry out the transition the way it deemed fit.
However, nothing of such apocalyptic changes occurred during the one year period of interim government, lasting until April 1991. I had not then envisioned so, but Kishunji’s stature and country’s fortune started going downhill from that very moment or, more precisely, from the evening of April 9, 1990—on the eve of the restoration of democracy—when Kishunji had appeared on national television to thank King Birendra for restoring democracy and he seemed apologetic to the king for launching the struggle for democracy. He acted like a saint rather than a politician and therefore he didn’t want to hurt anyone. He would be nice to everyone and used to maintain his charm in most dire of circumstances, even when he suffered an embarrassing defeat engineered by Girija Babu’s forces in the 1991 general election, and again when he was forced out from the prime ministership in 1999. He would oppose no one; criticize no one; hurt no one—whatever the insult; however sever the provocation!
Such saintly virtues, a squeaky clean image, absence of vanity, forbearance, and forgiveness shown to opponents are cherished by Kishunji’s followers and admirers and no other Nepali politician has come even close to him, in terms of honor and adulation the Nepali people have bestowed upon him. At the same time, the country and people could have benefited if he would have cultivated more worldly habits, to deal with real problems, in a real manner, even at the risk of dirtying his hands. But he resisted doing this all through his life, no matter how serious the infringement and how unjustified the attack. He would simply shut out from the rest of the world and not fight back. This manner of living was otherworldly, even divine, and certainly adulatory.
The personal legacy that Kishunji has left is simply exemplary but he missed the opportunity of passing down some of it to lesser souls who feel surrounded by evil forces all the time.
sshah1983@hotmail.com
Related story
Kishun Ji: A True Hero
