This week in 2000, when the first issue of Nepali Times came out we were still cautiously optimistic about the future and idealistic about the media's role in protecting democracy. It's been a rollercoaster six years. We have seen freedom squandered, usurped and returned. We have seen a massacre of ruling royals that was unprecedented in human history, a bloody war, a military coup engineered by a king and his ignominious downfall.
Re-reading the editorials in this space, we sound na?ve and prescient, hopeful and cynical, exhortative and preachy. We have dispensed unsolicited advice, and repeated ourselves tiresomely. We have excerpted below some editorials from the past six years, and they show that the more things change in Nepal the more they remain the same.
#1
19 July-25 July 2000
A sign of the times
Newspapers.do more than hold a mirror to society. They become the mirror itself. Journalism is called history in a hurry. It is also culture, sociology, anthropology, philology, and philosophy in a hurry. Nepali Times will aspire to be a true reflection of our times-a journal to record the life and times of Nepalis in the decades ahead.
There is a belief that literature is generally not read, and journalism is often unreadable. This newspaper will be different; it will seek to be informal, lively, clear and direct. Liveliness is serious business, it should not be confused with frivolity. Don\'t be fooled by the tabloid format, this is also a serious paper that tackles serious issues head-on, as this issue perhaps proves.
A newspaper needs a set of values to sustain itself. In a society cursed with extreme inequality, some of those values are fairly obvious: to speak for the last, the lost and the least. We will be fair, and we will protect our independence intensely. This is a modern newspaper for a new Nepal. A sign of the times.
#40
27 April -3 May 2001
Something rotten
Something is definitely rotten in the state of Nepal. Our erstwhile warriors of democracy have wasted 12 precious years quibbling about who gets to be on the top bunk, making people more and more disenchanted with this thing called democracy, feeding frustrations on which the Maoists have shrewdly cashed in with some classic grassroots mobilising and periodic senseless slaughter. With a little bit of help from like-minded friends from the right the Maoists are on the verge of throwing parliamentary democracy into the dustbin of history. That is the story so far.
A year ago, this could have been termed alarmist, but not anymore. The country and people are in danger of regressing by a decade. Meanwhile, even when they are faced with the prospect of systemic erasure, our political parties haven't stopped playing games. There they go, bickering over power which will give them the opportunity to top up their war chests for next year's local elections. After the last bout of blood-letting in Rukumkot and Rumaule, you would have thought they would have learnt their lessons and agreed on some fundamentals. But no, it was too much to expect from these visionless, self-centered ostriches.
#46
7-14 June 2001
"I may die, let my nation live on"
This is a line by the late King Mahendra that was turned into a patriotic song. Words particularly prescient in a week when two kings died in a carnage that nearly wiped out Nepal's entire royal family. Yet (and this will come as a surprise to those who see only the shroud of death that presently covers the country) the institutions of democracy have held. Confusion prevails among commoners about this mass murder of their royals. This was an aloof, but respected clan in a country of multiple ethnicities, castes, faiths and languages.
King Birendra was correct to a fault, as the political parties in power came and went in a welter of crises. It is the precedent that he set over the last decade of his reign that strengthened the foundations of our democracy. He had made it easy for his son Dipendra to follow, but Dipendra too is by now reduced to ashes by the banks of the Bagmati. It now rests on the survivor, Gyanendra, to make up for his brother's absence.
However, all will not be smooth for the newly anointed king. To begin with, Gyanendra will have to win the confidence of the people on two counts: first, he will have to convince conspiracy-obsessed citizens that the kingship was thrust upon him. Second, there is the matter of his son, Paras. With his reputation for lawless behaviour, the fact that Paras could be crown prince is unbearable for many Nepalis, who are additionally suspicious because the young man remained unscathed in Friday night's slaughter. This will be a tough one for King Gyanendra: he may well have to choose between the people and his son.
King Gyanendra must support the elected government and parliament to find a peaceful solution to this raging problem, and our squabbling elected leaders must support him. They must remember that they need to first save the country. If the nation ceases to exist, they will have nothing to fight over.
#50 
SUBHAS RAI #15 3-9 NOVEMBER 2000
6 -12 July 2001
Shi shi qiu shi
This Karl Marx aphorism translated into poetic Mandarin was Mao Zedong's favourite: "Seek truth from facts". Politics is a fleeting thing. The good guys don't seem so good after a while, and the bad guys in retrospect look like they were acting in enlightened self-interest. Just like there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies in politics, maybe there are no permanent good guys and no permanent bad guys either.
Nothing extraordinary, therefore, about Chairman Prachanda's 180 degree turn after the royal massacre to state that the Shah dynasty was the epitome of Nepali nationalism, and that King Birendra had Maoist sympathies. This week, the Chairman announced that his group will henceforth only bump off supporters of the "fascist Gyanendra-Girija clique". Everyone else is free to live.
Ultimately, the battle is over ideas. The only way to counter support born of fear and intimidation is through an even freer and fairer society that fosters greater public debate and forges a truly representative democracy. Unlike the dialectics of totalitarianism, democracy does not have ready, cut-and-dry answers. All democracy does is give competing ideas a legitimate forum so that the people can decide which way to go. At some point the Maoists, too, will have to contend in the arena of free ideas.
#70
30 November-6 December 2001
Just another Third World War
How could things have gone so wrong? It is futile looking too far back to the roots of this conflict. After all, you can go as far back as you want. The 12 years of democratic decay, the Panchayat years that stifled dissent and let social pressures build up, a hundred years of Rana rule, or the socio-cultural substrate of apathy and belief in the preordained.
We know the roots of the problem. It is the prolonged neglect and indifference of the Kathmandu elite and political class to the needs and aspirations of the majority of Nepalis. Adding fuel to the fire were the Maoists with their twisted vision of an outdated utopia. They cashed in on the people's silent rage at persistent injustice and inequality, the frustration that political freedom didn't translate into even the hope of economic wellbeing.
It is clear now that the Maoists took another of the Great Helmsman's helpful hints to regroup, re-arm and train during periods of rest. And when they did resume fire last Friday, it was with decisive and vicious force, exposing the vulnerability of the army and the total failure of intelligence.
#115
11-17 October 2002
The king and us
We wouldn't exactly say that the Nepali people were euphoric about King Gyanendra's move to sack the prime minister and form a new government. But they were beginning to hold politicians in such low esteem, and had watched the country suffer chronic abuse from greedy and selfish politicians for so long, that they did not complain when the king took over executive powers last Friday.
In fact, they welcomed the fact that here at last was someone who could take a decisive step, assume responsibility, and try to take the country out of the rut it is in. For a lot of Nepalis it has stopped mattering who rules over us, as long as peace is restored. Trapped between the far right and the far left, abused by both the security forces and the Maoist militia, the Nepali people were desperate enough to cling to this straw.
But the king's move is fraught with dangers: for himself, for the constitutional monarchy and for this country's future. The king seems to have reasoned that if he waited any longer, the politicians would have made such a mess that the Maoists could just walk into Kathmandu. But therein lies the biggest paradox in all this: the king has sidelined the very political parties that he will need in the long term to build public support against the Maoists and restore peace.
The king has gambled his throne on this one. And that act, by its very nature, has dragged the monarchy into the political muck. A constitutional monarchy needs to be above it all, untainted by partisanship and upheld as a symbol of national unity. It is now in danger of being just another political force jostling for power.
Having pushed the envelope on the constitution by assuming executive authority, the king has removed the parliamentary buffer, bringing him face-to-face with revolutionary republicans. Born-again Panchayat throwbacks will be doing the monarchy a great disservice if they see this as a chance to turn the clock back.
Time has moved on. And that is our advice to the Maoists as well: study your history, comrades. Remember how countries pushed to the brink by domestic rebellion are ripe for the picking by outsiders. You have gone as far as you can with the gun.
#146
23-29 May 2003
Politically incorrect
What is it with our politics that anytime anyone has a grudge against anyone else, it is the classrooms that get bombed, teachers that get harassed, schools that get padlocked, universities that get shut down, and children that get forced to join political rallies?
Nepal's education system, or what remains of it, has been the first target of every political agitation. The Maoists demolished the national school system in the two years of mayhem in which hundreds of teachers were killed, tortured and hounded out of the villages. Schools across the land were forced to close down, and in many places they remain closed. Their rationale was the irrational logic of revolutions: destroy everything before rebuilding.
The present state of flux actually presents an opportunity for reform. And that initiative rests with King Gyanendra, who by his act of taking on executive powers through a nominated cabinet will have to show required statesmanship. A meeting with the parties to come up with a new interim team to prepare for elections is long overdue. What is preventing him from doing this? The king's advisers should note: the lack of public support for the street agitation does not mean that the Nepali people want a return to pre-1990 autocracy.
#187 
SUBHAS RAI #40 27 APRIL - 3 MAY 2001
12-18 March 2004
10,000+
One little item of news two weeks ago escaped the notice of most people: the Home Ministry's announcement that the number of Nepalis killed in the past nine years of the 'People's War' had crossed the 10,000 mark. That this is now a five-digit conflict, in itself, shouldn't make it any more serious than it already is.
At the rate we are going, with 30 reported deaths a week on average, it won't be long before we hit 20,000. Then, 30,000. And then, what? Will the Maoists be any nearer to a republic? Will the Royal Nepali Army be any nearer to wiping out the Maoists? All we will achieve is more Nepali deaths, thousands upon thousands will be orphaned and widowed, millions will be forced to leave their homes. What kind of Maoist utopia commands that sort of a price in blood and misery?
The Maoists gave their revolution an ethnic edge with the declaration of seven autonomous zones in January. It is now in danger of going the way everyone feared: turning a class war into a caste war. It is now getting more and more difficult to believe that this revolution is moving along a pre-determined game plan. It looks seriously out of control. Giving the struggle an ethnic tint smacks of desperation, pointing to fatigue at its political centre. In any civil war, hardline militant or ethno-separatist elements gain supremacy when the political part of the struggle erodes or gets sidelined.
Cold-blooded murders of innocents, ambushing dairy tankers, torching buses, lynching six people in Saptari and leaving their bodies to rot by a school all indicate that violence has now become an end in itself. Why should the people be made to suffer any more for their endless power struggle? Announce elections, agree on a ceasefire, and let the people decide who they want to be ruled by.
#233
1-5 February 2005
Hariyo ban Nepal ko dhan
The sudden epidemic of tree-felling along Kathmandu's streets is drastic, misguided and not consonant with the needs of the population. In an increasingly congested valley, foliage provides both utility and aesthetics. It gives us fresh air that allows us to breathe freely. The role of trees is to introduce oxygen into the atmosphere and to ingest the carbon dioxide that human and mechanical activity spews into our enclosed airspace so prone to inversion.
Trees reach down to the grassroots and hold the soil together, they reach up to the sun and use their chlorophyll corpuscles to convert that energy into food useful to itself and to other animals. The sun and the trees, together with the supportive action of water, soil and air, make possible photosynthesis, the driving mechanism of life on earth. The action of cutting down trees that have lined our streets seems to have been hasty.
All in all, the trees should not have been axed. Because the damage has been done, can we ask the concerned authority to promptly correct the move and bring back greenery?
#298
19-25 May 2006
A New Nepal
Building is harder than destroying. Revenge is easier than reconciliation.
Now that the parliament has been declared supreme, and it has taken the far-reaching historic decision to find a way to accommodate a figurehead king we must start looking beyond dismantling to building. If we don't, we'll forever be stuck in this rut of retribution and counter-retribution.
Parliament's Magna Carta for Nepal is nothing less than revolutionary. But it is also accommodative. By giving the monarchy a last chance it has shown considerable courage in standing up to the republican wave that swept the country during the April uprising. By doing so, it is leaving the final decision to the fate of the monarchy to the people.
The decisive and radical measure to bring royal successions under purview of the people's representatives was actually the only decision that was really necessary. The rest (removing 'Royal' and 'Shri Panch', appointment of the COAS, parliament's state affairs committee to over see the royal palace) were just details. The other decision we applaud is the one to declare Nepal a secular state.
The seven party alliance has saved the institution of monarchy by a slender thread. We hope the king and his absolutist and fundamentalist cohorts have got the message. In the end, it was the moderate middle-path of the parliamentary democracy that rescued the institution whose current stakeholder was bent on destroying it.
The special resolution of parliament on Thursday lays the groundwork to resolve the political and legal questions once and for all so the nation can finally turn its attention to socio-economic progress.
