Though he had a sizeable fan following among the leftists, he had not come to the notice of a wider readership, including me. But that changed after the Royal Palace Massacre when he started writing what no one dared to write publicly: That the palace massacre was a conspiracy. It was the boldness with which he made his claims and not how he skillfully marshaled facts to bolster his claims that endeared him to readers. For example, in “Bhatij Dipendra, malai maf gara” (Nephew Dipendra, please forgive me), Sangraula resorted to fiction, a no-no in newspaper writing, in an attempt to exonerate Dipendra of the crime many believed he did not commit. But in doing so, he implicated the king – and the army – in the crime, which was a daring thing to do at that time.
Sangraula has always been bold in criticizing the Sher Bahadur Deuba government for imposing a state of emergency and mishandling the peace talks; the army for its transgressions during the emergency periods; the then king Gyanendra for taking over all the executive powers and imposing direct rule. Consequently, he got many threatening calls, and many people advised him to mellow down. But he kept writing what his conscience told him to write in his rapier-sharp prose and matter-of-fact tone, with the conviction that he was doing something for the collective good.
Sangraula is basically a literary writer, and he was worried that newspaper writing was taking his time away from creative writing. But he knew the power of newspaper writing in speaking the truth and did not want to give up broadsheet journalism at a critical juncture of Nepali history. Moreover, he was endowed with a sense of social responsibility. So when people asked him to focus on literature, he would say that he would write columns until the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections and the writing of the new Constitution were over and then switch over to writing literature. He, like so many others, had a fear that the CA elections and the writing of the new national charter would never happen, and hence wanted to warn people and the people in power of the consequences. No wonder he is still writing in like manner and medium.
The good thing about his writing is that he has near mastery over the Nepali language, perfected over many years by writing literature. He uses typical Nepali words to amusing effects. He plays with words, make them dance, literally, like no columnist can. More importantly, he takes his writing seriously. He has, of late, developed a habit of going through his own writing over and over again, weighing his words and trying to figure out their effects.
Another good thing about him is that he has never done mission writing. It is not surprising, therefore, that Communists like Madhav Kumar Nepal, Bam Dev Gautam, and Bidhya Devi Bhandari, the people he is much closer to, ideologically, have borne the brunt of his criticism the most. In contrast, Kangresis like Girija Prasad Koirala, Ram Baran Yadav, Gagan Thapa have at times received lavish praises from him. This has led people, especially those aligned to the leftist camp, to fault him for not having a firm ideological footing.
This is unjustified – he is as socialist as one can be – as he has criticized and praised people on case by case basis. Who can disagree with him for praising the failing eighty-plus-year-old Koirala when he took to the streets in protest against the king, and lambasting the same Koirala for dillydallying in inviting the Maoists to form a government after they won the most number of seats in the CA elections?
However, we can fault Sangraula for his acerbic tone, which unfortunately has become his trademark, and for being a tad opinionated in his writings. I have often felt that our newspaper editors should have asked him to tone down his writing a bit so that even when his criticisms veered towards the personal, it would not hurt people as much. They should have asked him to try to make his writing more objective, as his political commentaries at times seem too shallow. And they should have advised him not to react to every letter to the editor that was critical of him, because a person, who is as critical as he is, should have a large enough heart to take criticism in good spirit. But which editor would have the temerity to issue those injunctions to the writer who we all read, whether we like him or not?
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