Dr Harka Gurung: A Northerner of South Asia
In fond memory

By Peter J. Karthak

From Harka Bahadur Gurung to briefly Harka B. Gurung and finally Harka Gurung for the rest of his life, Doctor Gurung was to me the greatest Nepali alive on this side of the Mechi River – the other being Indra Bahadur Rai in Darjeeling, India. Both incidentally belong to the Adibasi Janjat or Indigenous Nations of the Gurungs in Midwest Nepal and the Kiranti Rais with roots in east Nepal, and both tribal clans are also spread in northeast India and elsewhere in the world. I belong to the Lepcha Nation of Ilam in Far East Nepal, Sikkim and Darjeeling District in India and the western parts of Ha in Bhutan. Therefore, my ethnical and technical affinities with them are not difficult to understand.
My earliest memories of Dr Gurung flash back to the late 1960s in Kathmandu when Major (ex-Indian Gorkhas) Ram Bahadur Chettri from Virginia, USA, wrote to me on the sad and untimely demise of Doctor Saa’b in a collective power-packed helicopter crash in Ghunsa in Taplejung on the Sad Saturday of September 23, 2006, coinciding with the Dashain eve of Ghatasthapana. When the Major reminisced that he was in Dr Gurung’s famed football squad, the celebrated Thamel XI, a team which also bagged the Tribhuvan Challenge Shield in 1967, if I am not mistaken, I remembered that our own Casino Nepal team was pitted against the Eleven at one time. But I was already diverted to the Gentlemen’s Cricket Team, so I was spared the task of facing Dr Gurung, a crew-cut and short, typically rustic looking Gorkha I was naturally attracted to, even then.

I was even more confounded when I saw the same man teaching a class at Tribhuvan University’s Department of Geography. I was a Masters student in the Department of English. “That is Dr Harka Bahadur Gurung,” a new classmate explained to me.

We had three heroes at TU during those times: Dr Harka Gurung, Dr Prakash Chandra Lohani and Pashupati Shumsher Rana. The latter two were at the CEDA. Outside TU, there were Dr Bhekh Bahadur Thapa, Dr Mohamed Mohsin, Hrishikesh Shaha, Bishwa Bandhu Thapa, Pasang Goparma, Dr Jogendra Jha, Bedanand Jha, Dr Mishra, Malhotra and other Panchayat pundits. But Harka Gurung was quite separated from these unilateral “Partyless” political paragons of king Mahendra and later Birendra.

For instance, we young fans of his heard one day with utmost surprise that Dr Gurung had presented his typically distinctive no-nonsense academic paper at the Royal Nepal Academy. The theme: Decentralization! Why, this was perfidy, heresy, treason and sedition in those days when the autocratic king, his feudal royal family members, even their distant but equally greedy in-laws and ambitious royal palace camp followers held on to their tight centralized powers! This was a most guaranteed way to the noose or firing squad for Dr Gurung. But nothing untoward happened to him; instead he was appointed to a number of choice Panchayat power places – a wise way to lull and quiet down a learned and multidisciplinary rebel, even then. But these platforms actually allowed Dr Gurung to strategize and chalk out many plans and designs for modern Nepal. In retrospect, even the dictatorial system had enough wisdom to say, “We can’t lick him; so make him join in!” It worked.

Harka Gurung was one of the sons of a British Imperial Indian Gorkha soldier whose retirement pension, according to The Economist, was twenty-six rupees per month, a generous sum that allowed him to maintain his family in creature comforts in the remote Ngadi River Valley in Upper Lamjung at the foothills of the arid and rain-shadow Manang District. From there, Harka Gurung walked barefoot as an escapee for seven days to reach Kathmandu for his next and decisive destiny, beginning with his three Rs at the ripe old age of nine for a fresh schoolboy. In comparison, I trekked for just two days from my Nor Busti farm next to western Sikkim for my further education in Darjeeling. But I had many characteristics to identify with him; hence this humble tribute to Nepal’s own homegrown hero.

Among other similarities, both of us came from long and strong British Indian and British Gorkha army traditions. Likewise, both of us being from mid-Asian tribal clans, we shared many similar humble pastoral backgrounds. Therefore, among the common traits between us were our inherent habits of direct speech and direct actions, devoid of the selective and exclusion-prone Bahun-Chettri-Thakuri argot and dress codes of feudal Kathmandu which Indra Bahadur Rai had already condemned some forty-five years ago in one of his essays: “We don’t need such lingo [and garbs] – period!”

Dr Gurung’s premature and sudden departure under strange circumstances has been covered by many. Basanta Thapa, Kanak Mani Dixit, Yubaraj Ghimire and CK Lal, among many other scribes, have lamented the loss. Memorial editorials have been aplenty, offering testimonials on him and his exploits for Nepal.

I had the singular privilege of being Dr Gurung’s understudy for three years when he was the chief advisor to the owning management of The Fulbari Resort & Spa in Pokhara. This was in the late 1990s, after his return from Malaysia where he headed an international research ad academic institution. It was a role reversal: The British Gurkhas created the new Malaysia out of old Malaya, and here was a latter-day Gorkha Gurung with his proven experiences, academic backing and accumulated intellect in the new world of Southeast Asia.

At Fulbari, Dr Gurung headed the group of consultants, and I was its lowliest and youngest professional member whose proud responsibility was to do the donkey’s work. Thus, Dr Gurung and I worked on the luxurious property’s landmarks and brochures thereof, and information sheets whereby I was able to host the resort’s website. He enlightened me on Ekai Kawaguchi’s passage through Pokhara to Tibet and his own refutation of Toni Hagen’s descriptions of Pokhara’s geo-structures. The lessons I learnt from him are very many, and it was my unexpected fortune to assist my hero, idol and proxy teacher in Nepal. All along, I’m proud to say that we two did our best and utmost for The Fulbari Resort & Spa until all the veteran members of the particular management team left.

Incidentally, he never took advantage of the facilities and services available to him at The Fulbari. He always stayed at the Hiranchan-owned Dragon and he considered Hirachan a foremost Thakali expert on and practitioner of Tibetan medicines.

The abovementioned similarities between the two of us must be defined by the straight talking we did, the crassness in our manners, our directness of calling spades not descriptive shovels, our mutually unrefined frankness and hitting the nails on the heads of whatsoever and whosoever. The result: We did not talk too much, or unnecessarily; after all, he was the assured leader and I was a meek follower, always one step behind. Even then, Dr Gurung let me into many of this Nepali medieval modern man’s private world.

This was a scholar, state and regional planner, writer, artist, photographer, Nepal’s cultural and political and administrative cartographer, soccer player, lawn tennis freak, rough talker, hard drinker and a card sharpie. On the side, he trekked and climbed mountains all over Nepal and once saved Ryutaro Hashimoto from high altitude oedema. He behaved unsociably; he never “refined” himself in the contrived world of Kathmandu; he was blunt and at times unsmiling; he was crude and even rude. He was a combination of the wise aboriginal Caliban and a Prospero of the enlightened and dynamic world.

In addition to his village-style drinking, clannish card-shuffling and gruff loud-mouthing, another habit of his that struck me was his daily craze for reading front to back those deeply yellow-tinted vernacular publications. “These papers cast out the hidden skeletons of Kathmandu’s cupboards – including mine, sometimes,” he said once in his office at New Era where he loved to relish digesting these tantalizing weeklies.

I liked these attributes, supposedly black negatives in the falsely burnished enclaves of the capital city, because they were the natural ingredients of an honest, sincere and integral man. His deportment said, “Take me as I am, or get lost!” I enjoyed his presence and togetherness which almost always verged on schoolboy naughtiness and teenage delinquency. However, if I could help it, the best bet would be to stay away from him, especially at drinks-and-dinner caucuses, and meet him only for professional purposes.

He looked at my CV once and commented, “Diverse career you’ve had.” This was at variance with my “chequered” career, according to many dissing cynics. He also understood my status as an almost stateless man in Kathmandu when he mentioned the “Lepcha Empire” stretching from the Kankai River in Nepal to Ilam, Darjeeling, Sikkim and west Bhutan and including the Koches of Coochbihar and Meches of the Mechi River Basin – all lands overtaken by others, mainly Nepali “Muglane”-s.

While in Pokhara, when I mentioned Thakalis and Gurungs as the endemic peoples of Pokhara, Dr Gurung added, “The Tamus (Gurungs), Tamangs and Thakalis are one and the same people. Times and territories separated them over the centuries.” A potential thesis, this!

How a modern Nepali at the doorstep of the 21st century must hark back to his ancient clan heritage was provided by one instance in Dr Gurung’s own family. A close elder had passed away, but the soul of the departed one still remained and lingered, causing disturbances and other disquieting experiences resulting in sleeplessness and unpleasant airs in the immediate family. Upon consultations, the family’s Gurung shaman’s oracle showed that there must be a propitiation ceremony to steer the soul peacefully and amicably to the other world. So Dr Gurung went once again to Chitwan for the family ceremony.

“During the puja, there were two goats brought to the venue. One was white and the other black. It was the black one which should accept the proffered foods. This he did, completely enjoying and finishing the delicious dishes,” Dr Gurung told us. “Now everything is back to normal in my family. The soul has crossed over to the other side, and peace and well-being have returned to one and all. So I’m back in Kathmandu.”

There was another event among Dr Gurung and his brothers before the arrival of Dashain that year.

“Peter, my brothers and I are going to have a decisive meeting: Whether to continue our decades-old Hindu rituals, or to revert to our age-old customs,” he said. He again left for Chitwan. Perhaps the entire family clan elected to return to their ancient Gurung religious vehicle of syncretic Buddhism, Bonpo, animism, shamanism and nature worship. This meant discarding their habitual Dashain, Tihar and other Nepali Hindu observations and going back to celebrating Lhochhar, Gurung style.

This reversal, and the tendency to opt for the same, is a recent phenomenon in the post-Jana Andolan I of 1990. The first morph goes back to 1960 when king Mahendra mounted his “royal” putsch against Nepal’s first democratic aspirations and brought in his unilateralist Panchayat political plans and policies. This turn of events created a mixed baggage among the ethnics of Nepal. But when the arbitrary Panchayat Polity fell through and king Birendra surrendered his hereditary absolute powers one by one, giving in to the second democratic movement of Nepal in 1990, many Jan Jat Nepalis did their soul-searching among themselves. They were the cleverer ones who had seen the practical and profiteering wisdom for themselves in the 1960s when the Shah royal absolutism of the “only Hindu Kingdom in the world” called Nepal took roots. The smarter Jan Jat clans, professing their own brand of opportunist and last-resort moral improvisation, said, “If you can’t lick them, join them” and participated in the Panchayat pantomime and its eventual pathetic bathos.

So those Indigenous Nationalities of Nepal toed the Hindu lines of rule in the country. In the process of selling their souls, the newly converted ethnic tribal “Hindus” attainted positions of power and prestige, grabbed lucrative posts, garnered fame and fortune and bettered their respective lots. All along, they became the Great Gatsbys of Nepal and laughed all the way to their banks, climbed up government ministries, carved out their niches in the bureaucracy and planning commission and corporations, harvested foreign appointments, landed luscious contracts, created placements for their relatives, and education and scholarship opportunities for their children.

In the end, when the Hindu Panchayat and Nepal’s royalty fell and came crashing down, the neo-Hindus, with all their profits accumulated in their pseudo-Hindu echelons, decided to return to their old folds. Their last logical laughter fell on the staunch and ultra Hindus of Nepal – those Bahun-Chettri-Thakuri ruling triumvirate (including Hindu Newars) – who would not and could not change their colours as the Jan Jats did. Poor they! Little did they remember in four decades that the compromised conversion of Nepal’s indigenous, aborigine and mostly Mongoloid Jan Jats to the Indo-Aryan rulers’ Hinduism was through hard negotiations of enticements on which the included and selected Adibasis enriched themselves on many levels.

I’ve mentioned Dr Gurung’s frequent visits to Chitwan. But where in Chitwan? Narayangarh? Bharatpur? Rampur? I never found out. It seemed that almost all the alpine Gurungs of the Ngadi Valley up north had migrated to the subtropical south of Nepal Terai, almost touching the Ganga Plains in India. An expert on demography and migration – whether permanent, trans- or circulatory – Dr Gurung himself was a transplanted member of the mobile clans in Nepal. Moreover, like every upward Nepali climbing the ladder of success and allurements, he made Kathmandu his home front and corporate power centre.

But he paid for this desertion rather dearly. Having meritoriously tasted state power and glory as a government minister and vice chairman of the National Planning Commission, among many other prestigious engagements, he at last contested local elections from Lamjung District for his own grassroots identity and sense of belongingness. But his constituents thought otherwise of him. So they voted him out of the local polling booths. They were right in their conviction, for Dr Gurung had not visited his people for years, and a few weeks of spot canvassing would not do, sir!

Dr Gurung, however, was not alone in the public opinion slaughter. There were others too – a Thakali, a Chettri Thapa, a Regmi Bahun and others who had long become Kathmanduites – to be trounced in their native “home” district elections. For the voters, Kathmandu was their so-called candidates’ new station, with Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi, Beijing and New York as their second addresses. Therefore, they were no more the sons of their district soils, and this message was loud and clear on Election Day. These natives, regardless of their castes, clans and creeds, could never return to represent them in the Parliament in Kathmandu! This reckoning, perhaps, was the only defeat experienced by Dr Gurung, for one, in his life; and his days were thenceforth spent between Kathmandu, Chitwan and the outer world. This was a heavy price every Kathmandu-centric Nepali has had to pay. So, was his fatal helicopter trip far away from his northwestern village of Ngadi below the Ngadi Himal (he himself named the peak!) to the remote northeast of Ghunsa in Taplejung in the Kanchanjunga Himals one such manifestation of going home?

Dr Gurung was also the Bahun and Puret of rechristening Nepal’s Himals, peaks and summits with local and regional Nepali names, thus doing away with the old British “peak numbers” and European names. This he did with a vengeance because the “Gorkha Peak” in the Alps and other mountains named after Gurungs and Magar Budathokis – the British Indian Gorkhas being the first mountaineers of Nepal decades prior to the Sherpas before campaign and wars, for which they were “bharti”-ed in the first place anyway, took the Gurkhas away from the mountains – were changed without the basic protocol of “even letting us know.” By the way, he ever so lightly hinted, given his economic expressions, that the Ganesh Himal is not dedicated to the Hindu deity Lord Ganesh but named after one Ganesh Bahadur (Thapa Chettri?), a member of the survey team deputed by the erstwhile “Royal” Nepal Army for “security” purposes, and a humble NCO at that.

In all cases, despite his latter-day modish urbanity and internationalization, Dr Gurung remained a mountain man throughout. He even named one daughter “Himalchuli” another son “Sagarmatha”, perhaps in memory of the long-left Himalchuli Range above his home district of Lamjung. While also talking of Lamjung, the joke went that he, being a Mongoloid of sparse hair, was never able to sport a “lam(o) jung(a)”!

In a larger sense, Dr Gurung also epitomized the dilemma of being a Nepali in South Asia. It is in addition to his advocacy for border regulations between Nepal and India which made some sections of Kathmandu bray for his neck. Nepal’s India lovers hollered, “Hang Harka!”

“Well, I wasn’t hanged, but my report was,” Dr Gurung said wryly. His recommendation was simple documentation and registration of both Indian and Nepali travellers crossing the open Nepal-India borders to and fro. This was not at all like the strong stand made later by Dr Prakash Chandra Lohani to erect an east-west boundary wall along the 1,808 kilometers of the porous borderlines between the two countries, something exactly replicated by the USA in late September 2006 to stem the unchecked flow of Mexicans into North America along the 1,100km Rio Grande fault lines.

It was quite another aspect of being a Nepali in Nepal which also plagued the likes of Dr Gurung. This was evident when he remarked one evening, “I was repeatedly noticed by Rajan last night at a party. He wanted to corner me for a conversation. But I foiled all his attempts.” He was talking about the then Indian ambassador to Nepal, KV Rajan. Dr Gurung’s reputation for his “anti-India” stances was only too well known; so perhaps the Indian envoy wanted to do something about it. But Dr Gurung did not oblige. To me, it was perhaps a mistake; he should have allowed some thawing. “Well, I didn’t, and that’s that,” he said with finality. He had no regrets.

Now since Dr Gurung is no more around to kick or be kicked, the Indian Embassy at Lainchaur of Kathmandu and the South Block in New Delhi are worse off and poorer at his absence because these two Indian power centres have lost a competent critic who kept the Indians on their toes with special alertness and vigilance with regards to their moves and decisions in the erstwhile “Indian subcontinent”, now rechristened South Asia and bonded by SAARC. His proactive stand for South Asia as a whole with Nepal to its north as a sensitive post between China and India was not wholly palatable to India because of its huge central landmass and position of power as a pivotal political and economic giant strategically placed it smack in the middle of SAARC. Suffice it to say, though, that Dr Gurung’s South Asian visions were reciprocated by IK Gujral, the former prime minister of India, for the greater good of the entire SAARC and beyond. But alas, the project floundered. Yet, Dr Gurung’s absence is largely made up by the massive missives he has left behind, and lessons and guidance are aplenty in those pages.

Within Nepal, Dr Gurung, himself an Adibasi Jan Jat, has left an indelible message for his fellow Indigenous Nationalities, among other groups and communities who are the various “nations” of the “state” called Nepal. For authority, it is best to transcribe the first paragraph of the last section from his own paper entitled “Nepali Nationalism” published in “Nepal Tomorrow: Voices & Visions” (edited by DB Gurung; Koselee Prakashan/Books, 2003):

National Integration. The terms ‘state’ and ‘nation’ have different political connotations. A nation is a more evolved condition than a state, for beyond territorial definition it includes an emotional bond among the people within the state. The Nepali state has maintained its independent status for a long period, but it is yet to emerge as a nation. The country has only been unified geographically, and not socially and economically. The social model for national unification so far has been Hinduization which goes against Nepali multiethnic character. How stultifying the hangover of Nepal’s Muluki Ain has been can be gauged by comparing the state of neighboring societies across Nepal’s borders in the immediate west and east. The social backwardness and exploitation of dalit in the Khasa region of west Nepal reminds one of the situation in Kumaon and Garhwal a hundred years ago. If that is the past, the future of Nepali society can be visualized by looking east, at the social dynamism of the Nepali-speaking population east of Mechi river [who have] charted the path to Nepali nationalism. These pioneers were Darjeeling’s [Surya Bikram] Gyawali and Kalimpong’s [Iman Singh] Chemjong in history, Darjeeling’s [Dharani Dhar] Koirala and Kalimpong’s [Paras Mani] Pradhan in language, Kalimpong’s [Dambar Singh] Gurung and [Ganesh Lal] Subba in politics, and so on. In contrast to Nepal, the politics of Sikkim and Darjeeling is not the monopoly of the upper castes. In Sikkim, the chief ministership passes from Gurung to Basnet to Limbu and Chamling [Rai] while in Darjeeling the political contenders are a Ghising [Tamang] and a Subba [Limbu]. (Inclusions mine.)

This extracted passage has all the multiple meanings typical of Dr Gurung’s encyclopaedic and multidimensional thoughts. Firstly, it shows that Nepali Jan Jats outside Nepal have flourished in secular airs and equal-opportunity environments and competitive schemes of things. Secondly, by the same fair-practice tokens, however, the upper-caste Nepalis within the same democratic regimes have not been able to be competent enough, whereas their counterparts in Nepal have been at the helm of every power bloc. The within-Nepal factors are clear enough: Their proven exercise of town-crying and pen-pushing culture together with their age-old applications of the intriguing and conspiring chakari-chukli-chaplusi tricks under the birta-jagir-jimwal-hakim land grant and official posting patronage of the Shah and Rana direct rules and absolute reigns created the dichotomy of selective inclusion and the exclusion of the maximum majority: the finessed twin cruxes in the process atrophying the nation-state build-up of Nepal to this day.

Simultaneously, too, there are other larger questions for Nepal’s Jan Jats to ask themselves and resolve. The best-placed Jan Jats – the educated, “cultured”, decision-makers and powers that be – are where they are today because of their timeserving acculturation to the Hindu upper castes and ruling echelons of the “Kingdom” of Nepal wherein they simulated the asymmetrical ways and perversive practices and avaricious means of the “fatalistic to development” BCN – the Bahun-Chettri-Newar – trinity of “Janai” Jati influencers. This is how the post-1950/1960 push-pull phenomena in their own turn created a corruptive aristocracy among the Jan Jats too, instead of promoting their unique competitive meritocracy just as their brethren have accomplished in India’s politics, its administrative and military services and other sectors as well as in the British Army, Singapore, Brunei and Bhutan, among other countries of their residence.

Consequently, buttressed by other demographic and exclusive logistics as well, some indigenous groups of Nepal consider themselves more equal than their other fellow ethnics. One of the fallouts of this new class structure has been that certain endemic communities feel it safe to practice open communalism for their identity and continuity. This is one of the agendas of the have-nots to take actions against the neo-haves who betrayed their traditional trust and became wayward in all traditional manners and cultural modes to reach where they are hanging on at present.

But now the tables have turned: The opportunistic deserters are at the receiving end in the post-Jana Andolan II phase in Nepal in 2006, and appropriate responses seem to be the game plan of the lesser and deprived ones, those who missed the bandwagon for nearly five decades. The protective strategy within itself, therefore, would seem to be federal republicanism in future Nepal to save its Indigenous Nations from each other’s vendettas and reprisals. I’m sure, for one, that Dr Gurung was aware of the new winds blowing over these latter-day fabrics of the “registered” 61 Nepali Jan Jat Nations in Nepal.

The ten-year Maoist Movement in Nepal as well has been led by two Bahuns – Pushpa Kamal Dahal “Prachada” and Dr Babu Ram Bhattarai “Lal Dhoj”. Ever an acute observer of the decade-old “terrorism” and insurgency in Nepal, it was Dr Harka Gurung, along with two other important Jan Jat members, who reminded the number two Maoist leader Dr Babu Ram Bhattarai in the pre-Doramba-aborted Nepalgunj and Hapure state-Maoist negotiations that ninety percent of the Maoist fighting cadres consisted of Nepal’s Jan Jats, a fact reportedly acknowledged by Babu Ram by mentioning their appropriate representation in the politburo by having a Madhise Yadav [Matrika], a Gurung [Dev], a Magar Thapa [Ram Bahadur “Badal”] and other ethnics, Dalits as well as women.

Harka Gurung’s last position, among the many he held – he modestly preferred to be “just one among many” members in a board – was advisor to WWF Nepal in its conservation crusades. He perished in the ill-fated helicopter mishap at Ghunsa in the same capacity. In this connection, I find it worth noting that in his keynote address at the last PATA conservation tourism meet held at The Fulbati Resort & Spa in Pokhara, he quoted Chief Seattle’s grateful tributes to Mother Nature for her innumerable gifts to humankind. Had his folk wisdom been heeded, there would be no near-extinction of the bison and bald eagles; there would be no Dust Bowl and Katrina. When Nepal’s own Hindu masters such as Gorakh Nath, Yogi Nara Hari Nath and Khaptad Baba – if not the Shivapuri Baba himself as well – left no descriptions and prescriptions on the Himalayan ecology or environment, Dr Gurung’s Nepali Jan Jat quotation of a Native American conservationist leader should be the morning prayers of every future Harka Gurung, Chandra Prasad Gurung and Mingma Norbu Sherpa, Tirtha Man Maskey, Dawa Tshering Sherpa and Yeshi Lama who disappeared in the rockface of Ghunsa in Taplejung with other fellow conservation crusaders on the first Dashain day of 2006.

While concluding, this one last bit on Dr Harka Gurung’s gentle outburst should be worth noting. The NFDIN (National Foundation for the Development of Indigenous Nationalities) had organized a meeting to have the then minister of finance Dr Prakash Chandra Lohani clarify his new fiscal-year budget allocations for the Jan Jats, Dalits and women of Nepal. In her presentation, Dr Durga Pokharel as chairperson of the country’s National Women’s Council posed an open-floor question to Dr Harka Gurung, another paper presenter: “How can the plights of Nepali women be addressed successfully? I request the Doctor Sa’ab to please enlighten us.” Dr Gurung answered: “As long as the Nepali brand of Hinduism prevails in Nepal, my dear Bahini, there’s no hope either for Nepal’s women and their children, or for the Dalits, and even much less for the country’s Jan Jatis. Period!”

There was a sudden pall of fatigued silence in the crowded hall. It was the eerie silence of the meek lambs of Nepal called women, children, the segregated and marginalized.

The hush still remains, even more so when the voice itself is no more to be heard among those who need its clarion call more than any other aggregate groups.

____________
So: http://www.kantipuronline.com/feature.php?&nid=91335

May Dr Gurung's soul rest in peace.

As for Mr Karthak, I liked his pieces in the travel journals much more than some of the other things he has since come to write. But I wish him the best.

I thought this was a well written and balanced obituary:

Victims of circumstance
MP Krishna Charan Shrestha and Harka Gurung, connected in life, died the same day

FromIssue #317 (29 September 06 - 05 October 06)

This Dasain began inauspiciously. First came the shocking news of the murder of Krishna Charan Shrestha, lawmaker from Siraha. Krishna Charan was a popular figure in his constituency, two of his followers gave up their own lives trying to defend him and then pursuing his killers. He belonged to a generation of politicians who interact directly with the people over the head of influential powerbrokers.

The second news was even more unsettling. A helicopter with eminent conservationists on board was reported missing in the Kanchenjunga region. Two days later, the worst fears of worried families and friends turned out to be true: the helicopter had crashed with no survivors. Professionals in the field say it will take about three decades to produce so many conservationists of that calibre again.

Though not a conservationist in the academic sense of the term, Harka Gurung too died for a cause close to his heart. As a development thinker, Gurung had an abiding interest in establishing mutually beneficial relationships between human beings and their habitat. He died returning from a ceremony handing nature protection to the people of that area.

On first meeting Harka, many found him blunt. He never attempted to even appear likable. Like most interdisciplinary scholars he had strong views about everything.

He relished making fun of those less informed but more dogmatic than he was. Irreverence and wit were his natural traits. Despite his lack of social skills he was a towering presence in the field of physical planning. You could agree or disagree with him on various issues, but in the area of regional planning, it was impossible to hold any view without referring to his ideas.

He is credited with creating initially four, then five, development regions in the country. King Birendra’s personal interest didn’t work for one simple reason: without a political structure to back them up, development regions were castles in the air, hung by a thin thread from the capital.

When Harka realised why his ideas weren’t working, he moved on and proposed his second most significant contribution to planning: the concept of parallel south-north growth corridors to connect railheads in neighbouring India with processing and production centres of the Nepal tarai and Bhitri Madhesh.

Harka was dragged into controversy by the politics of demography. In the 1980s, he headed a commission asked to prepare a purist population plan for the tarai.

The report was as expected, and is supposed to have inspired the formation of the Sadbhawana Manch, which later became the Sadbhawana Party. Jaya Krishna Goit, the leader of splinter group of Maoists which claims to have killed Krishna Charan Shrestha, is in some ways the political progeny of backlash created by the report.

Post-1990 Harka Gurung perhaps realised that planning for development means little if the planned-for don’t have a stake in its implementation. He didn’t mention ‘democracy’ as often as many of his former colleagues from Panchayat days did, or display any of the zeal of a neo-convert. His tone and tenor for the last several years had become decidedly egalitarian.

Krishna Charan shouldn’t have been in the kind of politics promoted and patronised by Shah kings. Perhaps he fell victim to the legacy of enmity nurtured by state-centric Panchayat-era politics.

Harka Gurung knew too much to be hopping around the Himalayas in a chartered helicopter in bad weather. Perhaps he found the end he subconsciously cherished.

Jaya Krishna Goit is too sharp not to know the consequences of his actions. Will he survive long enough to realise that politics of vendetta is a blind alley?

Rumour is rife that ‘something will happen’ during Dasain. For far too long, Nepalis have seen their worst fears coming true. May it be different this time despite the sad start to the festival.