History is a many angled mirror in which nations easily see themselves as they wish they were. Especially are political histories prone to convey a grand panorama of wars, rulers and a panoply of other prominent personages, while scant attention if any, is given to the peasant who first fashioned a better hoe or selected a superior fruit or grain variety.
Identifying a broader history is particularly critical in countries like Nepal, which is only recently emerging from feudalism and legally abolished slavery in 1925. Where other nations have had centuries to sift and sort fragments of their past and settle upon an agreed interpretation, modern communications and development demands force a telescoping of decisions. Choices of what is unique, valuable and viable must be made rapidly and will become binding upon the future.
Less than two centuries ago the numerous fiefs of hill rajas along the southern escarpment of the Himalayas were unified by the military mastery of the house of Gurkha. In the 19th century these people, tracing their ethnic origins to Mongols and Tibetans, and to Rajputs and Brahmans from the Indian plains, speaking numerous dialects and holding diverse faiths, were welded into a kingdom. National isolation was sought in order to shield themselves from British-Indian domination from the south and Tibetan-Chinese from the north. Consequently Nepal today, with a population nearing 13 million, ranks among the least modernized nations, with a literacy rate of less than 20 percent.
MAHESH REGMI’S research and translation service, started in 1957, was a new kind of enterprise for Nepal. His weekly Nepal Press Digest has become an effective journal of contemporary reporting within the kingdom. It is a valued source for diplomats in Kathmandu and vital for the United Nations and other organizations seeking to assist in Nepal’s progress. The Regmi Research Series, printed for “private study and research” on a subscription basis, is opening chapters of Nepal’s past to her own and international scholars.
REGMI has also produced three major scholarly works. Land Tenure and Taxation in Nepal was published in four volumes at Berkeley, California, between 1963 and 1968. A Study in Nepali Economic History 1768-1846, detailing the agrarian basis of the society during national unification, appeared in 1971. In 1976 followed Landownership in Nepal, an analysis of the origin and evolution of the rural problems besetting 95 percent of his countrymen.
Born in 1929 into a Nepali family with a scholarly tradition, REGMI was tutored at home by his father until he enrolled at Trichandra College in Kathmandu where he took his bachelor’s degree in 1948. He entered His Majesty’s Government of Nepal in 1951 as Acting Director of Industries and, concurrently for brief periods, of Cottage Industries and the Central Purchase Department, before embarking upon his own venture. In 1961-62 he was Member Secretary of the Royal Taxation and Land Reform commissions. In and out of government service, his commitment has been to understanding, explaining and furthering the lot of the Nepali peasant whose hillside farm beneath the towering Himalayas remains the foundation of Nepalese society.
In electing MAHESH CHANDRA REGMI to receive the 1977 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognized his chronicling of Nepal’s past and present, enabling his people to discover their origins and delineating national options.
