Bikram Sambat 2061 may be the year Nepalis start to come to terms with the royal massacre. For many reasons, they badly need to do so. In retrospect it now seems that they carried on and accepted the new king in the massacre's aftermath altogether too easily ('June first', #198). It seems that they are now asking the unanswered questions about the massacre more openly and more keenly-perhaps because of the increasingly strident republican slogans being chanted on the streets. In the same issue, Daniel Lak's 'The massacre books' about the recent slew of books on the subject, in my opinion, does a major disservice by dismissing Westerners' accounts as derivative, Orientalist and obsessed with the odd. Not having read them, I cannot speak for all the books, but one of them-Willessee and Whittaker's Love and Death in Kathmandu (Rider 2003)-is much better than Lak represents it. Yes, it is written in a simple and popular style. Yes, the cover is a little lurid. But no, it does not provide 'a shallow, derivative account'. It is in fact a clearly and coherently written, carefully organised and apparently truthfully reported result of serious research over many months. It is derivative only in the sense that the authors have read what others wrote on the subject and tried to take account of it in their narrative-a process which is usually described as scholarly. It is not true, as Lak claims, that the authors give no 'off-the-record' accounts, nor is it true that they ignore the opinions of ordinary Nepalis (they are well aware of what they think but say 'You simply could not sit across from these survivors [of the massacre], listening as they recounted the horrifying details, and doubt their story', p256). Nor is it fair to imply, as Lak does, that the authors are endlessly boasting and inserting themselves into the narrative.

Perhaps Daniel Lak is too close to the subject. But, whatever the reason, he has failed to provide a generous and intelligent critique of the books he is reviewing. Maybe these books do focus on Nepalis' religious beliefs. But is this Orientalism? On the one hand he criticises Gregson, Mishra, Willessee et al. for not taking Nepalis' beliefs about the massacre seriously enough and for not talking to ordinary Nepalis. On the other hand, he faults them for taking ordinary Nepalis' religious beliefs too seriously. One thing King Gyanendra evidently has in common with his people is believing firmly in the powers of Hindu gods and goddesses. Intellectuals who belittle this do not help themselves understand what they are attempting to describe.

Lak ends by praising and recommending a French spy thriller fantasy which, he tells us, has the massacre as the outcome of a plot by the SAS and CIA. Is this really where Lak wants the debate to go? Further into the realms of fantasy and away from plausible explanations that can be squared with the eyewitness accounts and facts that can be established? If the debate about the massacre is to advance, those who oppose the official explanation need to come up with a plausible alternative account that has fewer holes in it and they have to explain how it is that the Maoists, who have been trumpeting the 'murderer' charge from day one, have so far failed to find or produce any evidence to support their case-which they would have every reason to do if it existed.
Nepali Times should get the massacre books reviewed by someone who is interested and capable of arguing about the material in detail, not someone who knows the story already and is willing to dismiss them all out of hand.

David Gellner,
Tokyo