Remembering December 15, 1960

Remembering December 15, 1960

Siddhi B. Ranjitkar

It was one of the cold December mornings of 1960, people kept usually warm in the unheated houses wrapping in small quilts. I was not different from any other people; so wrapped in a short and thin quilt, I was studying my science subjects in preparation for taking the examinations of the intermediate science certificate that would open a door to anybody willing to be a doctor, engineer, forester, agriculturist and any other subjects of interest in the science field.

A man had been speaking on the next house radio for some time; it was unusual at that time. Filled with curiosity, I opened up the radio breaking my study. King Mahendra was speaking on the radio. He was speaking about all sorts of ills he could label on the leaders of the Nepali Congress (NC), and declared that he had dissolved the parliament and the government, as they had been corrupt; so the parliamentary democracy was not suitable to the soils of Nepal but he did not say what were suitable to the country.

I rushed out in the morning air on the deserted streets in Kathmandu. Most of the people looked fearful perhaps not knowing what would happen to them and to the country; some were puzzled. People assembled wherever radio was playing and carefully listening the radio. The streets were quieter than usual. Only a few people were going around. Most probably, people might have thought that that was not the appropriate time to go out. Anybody might be mistaken for the NC members and might land in a jail for no reasons.

In the afternoon a man speaking through the loud speaker attached to a jeep speedily rode through the Kathmandu town opposing what the king had done. The speed of jeep had made me difficult to grab the few words hurriedly and apparently spoken with fear. The man in the jeep did not show up again. Obviously, the Police had not much time to arrest such a person because they had been busy with catching the big fishes.

Despite the fact that the NC had won the two-thirds majority in the elections to the seats in the parliament held in 1959, no street demonstrations, and no protest rallies were held in the Kathmandu Valley on this unfortunate day: December 15, 1960. Possibly within one-and-a-half year rule of the NC, the leaders had managed to alienate the people sufficiently to ignore the sending of the NC leaders to jail. As a result, no spontaneous protests were held anywhere against the killing of democracy at that time. The same people had shed their blood to finish off the apparently mighty Rana family rule a few years ago did not show up to protest against the Shah killing the democracy. This time the people simply kept silent on the Shah family coming forward to rule the people.

By the end of the day, no trace of political parties had remained in Kathmandu. I noticed that all the flags of different political parties at their party offices had gone. Party signboards had disappeared. In the evening, some people even put up oil lamps to welcome the dismissal of the NC government indicating that the NC government had succeed to earn enormous enmity of the people.

One of the first-tiered leaders of NC, Subarna Shumsher JB Rana had left Kathmandu on December 14 for his home in Calcutta. Subarna was one of the Ranas designated as the ‘C’ class that had been denied to be the heir to the throne of the Rana prime minister. So, his brothers and he joined the NC leaders to tear down the Rana rule. Most probably, he had the hint that the NC leaders would be arrested and imprisoned for years to come. So, he avoided the jail life leaving Kathmandu a day before he was to be arrested.

On this very day, the association of the youth cadres of NC called Tarundal held a convention in Kathmandu. All the NC leaders were in the convention to deliver speeches or to listen to the speeches. All youth leaders were participating in the convention. Prime Minister BP Koirala and Minister for Transport and Works Ganesh Man Singh were among the top NC leaders attending the convention of the Tarundal.

A day before the December 15, 1960, the Narayanhiti palace administration had ordered all staffs to be at their desk 8:00 AM; two hours before the usual office hour. Staffs failing to reach at that time were locked out. All the doors were closed, and the palace was made off-limit to anybody. Sufficient numbers of guards were posted at each gate to stop anybody venturing to come nearby the palace.

While Mahendra spoke on the radio against the NC leaders and their government and the parliamentary democracy, a contingent of high-level army went to the meeting of the Tarundal. They saluted Prime Minister BP Koirala and Minister Ganesh Man Singh, and said that the king wanted to see them so they came to collect them. They took BP Koirala and Ganesh Man Singh puzzling the attendees of the Tarundal convention. Obviously, the message had not reached them yet but soon after another group of army men arrested the rest of the leaders and youth cadres from the convention hall and took them straight to the nearby jail.

The army took BP Koirala and Ganesh Man Singh to the Sundarijal army barrack and locked them up there in different rooms where they spent seven years in isolation. These rooms became the museum in 1990s.

Some leaders of NC and CPN (Communist Party of Nepal) escaped to nearby border towns in India. Some went underground moving from one place to another. The police rounded up the potential troublemakers including former prime ministers, and leaders to make sure that nobody dared to speak against the killer of democracy. Within a few days, the army and police completed the arrest of major political activists or forced them out of the country. The administration announced anybody giving the clue leading to the arrest of the NC and other political party members would receive a pretty handsome trophy.

Killing the infant democracy on December 15, 1960, Mahendra had actually sown the seed of the demise of the monarchy. Then, he had later introduced the no-party system called Panchayat that had nurtured the Shah-dynasty-killer plant diminishing the life of the monarchy in Nepal.

Birendra had lengthened the life of the monarchy to some extent bowing down to the pressure of the political parties and reintroducing the multi-party democracy accepting the Constitution of Nepal of 1990 that had made the provision for multi-party democracy and the constitutional monarchy non-amendable.

However, Gyanendra burnt down the Constitution of Nepal of 1990 and with it took the monarchy to a cremation ground on February 01, 2005. Later, in 2008, the first session of the Constituent Assembly-cum-parliament cremated it ending the 240-year Shah dynasty and thousands of year old monarchical rules. Thus, Nepal became the Federal Democratic Republic.

In 1951, Nepalis led by the NC party ended the most despotic Rana family rule, and effectively return the power to the then monarch Tribhuvan hoping that he would use it in an avid interest of the people and institutionalize and strengthen the democratic system of governance but he did not only meet the aspirations of Nepalis for institutionalizing democracy but also did not keep the words given to the people that he would hold elections to a constituent assembly for writing a new democratic constitution of Nepal rather he used all his authority to consolidate the palace power.

Nepalis had aspired to the fast development of the country after ending the century old Rana family regime that had extracted everything from the Nepalis for their family luxurious lives. They had kept about two million Nepalis virtually in hunger while they feasted lavishly every day on silver plates. After the victory over the Rana family rule, people thought that Nepalis would no more need to go to sleep with empty stomachs but it was not so. In the place of the Rana family, a new family emerged that again sapped the Nepalis. The Shah rulers created such a family.

Illuminating their houses on the evening of December 15, 1960, to welcome the unjust step of seizing the power from the democratically elected government of NC, they had actually raised their heads to see whether they could come to life again. Mahendra gave them a positive sign and actually asked to help him in his unjustly set up administration. Again a few families started enjoying every possible privilege keeping millions of Nepalis hungry and destitute.

After the demise of Tribhuvan, Mahendra sat on the throne. He had not promised anything to the people nor obliged to the people for getting back the power lost to the Rana family. So he just behaved that he had simply inherited everything from his father, he had not committed anything to the people and was not in a mood to write a new constitution rather hung on the Interim Constitution of Nepal of 1951.

The NC leaders launched a non-cooperation movement in 1957 forcing Mahendra to promulgate a new constitution and hold elections to a new parliament and set up an elected government. Mahendra was still considerably weak and had no idea what the people thought about him and his rule; in addition, the influence of the NC on the grassroots Nepalis was still fresh at that time. So, he gave in to the demands of the NC leaders and promulgated a first democratic constitution of Nepal and held elections in 1959 to elect parliamentarians. 

NC, the communists, royalists and other political parties participated in the elections to a parliament in 1959. The NC won the overwhelming number of seats in the parliament: 74 in the 90-seat parliament. Communists won four seats and other parties managed to get one or two seats. That was all the parliament of the late 1950s.

The NC leaders could have used the mandate Nepalis gave them judiciously and run the country for the welfare of the Nepalis in general. However, the NC leaders in power have been drawing the circle of their people smaller and smaller even throwing the dedicated and sincere NC leaders and cadres out of that circle. If you were within the circle you enjoyed everything: power, prosperity and good life if not you were a commoner not entitled to have any benefit brought by the democratic system of governance. Thus, the NC leaders in governance alienated Nepalis including the sincere NC members and sympathizers.

Mahendra enjoyed a lot of free time after he turned over the power to the elected leaders. He held the strong idea of the power belong to him as it was passed from the father to the son but he was forced to give in to the demand of the NC leaders. So, he had focused his mind on taking back the power he passed on to the NC leaders through the general elections held in 1959.

In the quest of how to regain the lost power, he made visits to different parts of the country including the remote areas on horse, on foot and so on, on the way sounding how the people were feeling about the rule of the NC leaders. He also demonstrated that he was the only legally authorized person to wield the power. In other words, he introduced him to the people as the only king that had the right to rule them not the NC leaders. For more than one year, he had traveled from one corner of the country to another seeking the opinions of the people before crystallizing his idea of taking over the power again on December 15, 1960.

At the same time, the NC leaders had been busy with running the administration with the heavy inputs from the NC cadres. The state bureaucracy had become virtually the monopoly of the NC cadres. These guys in turning the rule of law into the rule of the NC had not only scared Mahendra but also the people in general. Certainly, Nepalis had experienced the nasty rule of the NC. Either you had to be the member of the closed circle of the NC or you had to use your money to get done something from the state administration. That paved the way for Mahendra to grab the power from the elected government.

After making as many visits as possible to different parts of the country and watching the people from the shortest possible distance and reaching the grassroots level people as much as possible, Mahendra came back with the conviction that he could do it. That was the beginning of the end of the Shah dynasty.

Mahendra planned a failure-proof coup very well. The public alienation from the NC had made Mahendra easy to usurp the power. However, Mahendra had no vision of long-term impact of his action on the life of the Shah dynasty. His unfortunate action on December 15, 1960 had put the political clock back to the time of his forefathers and had denied the people their sovereignty for almost another 50 years to come. People got back the sovereignty lost to Mahendra in 2008 probably forever this time. So, on December 15, 1960, Nepalis lost the democracy to Mahendra but Mahendra actually started the beginning of the end of the Shah rule.

December 15, 2010.