From HIMAL, Volume 6, Issue 2 (MAR/APR 1993) Is there today in South Asia a movement to establish a “Greater Nepal”? If not, is such a movement likely to arise anytime soon? Most connosieurs of South Asian news and politics claim not to believe that there is a movement afoot to create a “Greater Nepal” …
From HIMAL, Volume 6, Issue 1 (JAN/FEB 1993) Were Tibet a developing country rather than a sullen Autonomous Region (U-Tsang and a truncated Kham), the prevailing mantras in seminars and gostis in Lhasa in 1992 would all be about integrated hill (and high plains) development, the girl child, or the the myriads of other development …
From HIMAL, Volume 6, Issue 1 (JAN/FEB 1993) In the headlong rush from producing one Himal to preparing another, this column (meant to communicate with readers) tends to receive short shrift. So hello again, after a lengthy hiatus. Firstly, we say thank you and bid goodbye to Kesang Tseten, who has stood by Himal steadfastly …
From HIMAL, Volume 5, Issue 6 (NOV/DEC 1992) Mountaineering has not even begun to live up to its economic promise in the Himalaya. Decades of publicity about difficult climbs by elite mountaineers has kept ‘holiday climbers’ away. Encouraging easier, more commercial climbing, could prove lucrative to Himalayan countries if their governments, tourism industry and native …
From HIMAL, Volume 5, Issue 4 (JUL/AUG 1992) Arrivals at Goldhap Refugee Camp, 22 -29 July 1992. Pictures by Laxmi Prasad Luitel The Bhutanese refugees have a problem. The world outside Nepal does not know they are there. The few that hear of them are told that they are migrants from the Indian northeast, illegal …
From HIMAL, Volume 5, Issue 4 (JUL/AUG 1992) Lhotshampas, the Nepali-speaking people of southern Bhutan, are being forcibly evicted from their country by an elite that fears demographic inundation. Such fears are understandable, but not the method of ‘cultural cleansing’ being applied. Gross National Happiness, which King Jigme Singye Wangchuk wishes for his subjects, seems …
From HIMAL, Volume 5, Issue 3 (MAY/JUN 1992) In these times of political flux all over the Himalayan region, it is essential to be sensitive to assertions of identify. Such sensitivity is especially important in Nepal, whose people have only just gained the right to speak out and to demand. In the past, it was …
From HIMAL, Volume 5, Issue 2 (MAR/APR 1992) It is not long ago that a Finance Minister of Nepal had to remind the representative of an international development bank: “I am on the driver’s seat now. You just fill up the tank when it is necessary.” In this issue of Himal, rather than try to …
From HIMAL, Volume 5, Issue 1 (JAN/FEB 1992) The Tibetan government in exile at Dharamsala is more sophisticated in dealing with the western media than the Indian, Bangladeshi and Nepali officialdom combined. And so the setting was well set for a major announcement by the Dalai Lama: 9 October 1991, a wood-panelled auditorium of Yale …
From HIMAL, Volume 5, Issue 1 (JAN/FEB 1992) The beauty, the cultural strengths, and the very many charms of Kathmandu Valley are all givens. Poets, essayists and travel writers have been extremely kind to our “Nepal Valley” over the years, and we felt no need here in the pages of Himal to further gild the …