Nepal

**Nepal**, officially the **Kingdom of Nepal**, is a country in South Asia, bordered by Tibet to the north, Bhutan to the east, and India to the south.

## History

### Nepalese Revolution

The Nepalese Revolution occurred after Nepal's defeat in the Central India War, ending a hundred years of the Rana dynasty's authoritarian rule. Nepal served as a staunch ally of the Entente, and fought a bitter campaign to defend itself from Indian nationalist forces, but would find itself swiftly abandoned as British colonial forces fled the subcontinent. Betrayed and shattered, the Rana prime minister was forced to return Uttarakhand and the northern Bengal to India, withdrawing from the war in 1946.

Nepal's government fell almost immediately after, with Prime Minister Juddha Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana resigning his post, succeeded by Mohan Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana as the next in line. Mohan would then almost immediately be ousted in a coup d'état, committed by a coalition of pro-democratic forces known as the Nepali Congress, supported directly by King Tribhuvan. With support from India, mainly secured by the left wing of the Congress, the highest-ranking Ranas were completely exiled from Nepal.

### 1948 parliamentary election

In the new democratic elections put forth by Tribhuvan, the recently-formed Nepali Congress had almost immediately dissolved itself into its two constituent parties: the National Congress, led by brothers B.P. and M.P. Koirala, and the Democratic Congress, led by Subarna Shamsher Rana. At this point, the Nepali Congress was a political party in its infancy, only seen as an alliance between the two parties formed moments before the revolution. Its dissolution was seen as an inevitability due to the revolution's potential for leaving a vacuum of power.

In the 1948 parliamentary election, tensions between the Democratic and National congresses had already begun to affect the young democracy. The Democrats, led by a C-class Rana, were met with extreme suspicion from the radical wing of the Nationals, particularly K.I. Singh and Ram Prasad Rai: two of the most prominent and popular figures among the war, who had garnered a massive support base on a left-wing populist platform. It soon became apparent these two figures served as the Koiralas' biggest threat, rather than the Democrats, as the Nationals endured a schism within the election year. Singh and Rai created the Nepali National Congress (Revolutionary), while the Koirala wing became the Nepali National Congress (Socialist).

The split within the National Congress allowed the less popular Democrats to secure a plurality of the popular vote, but with a three-way tie between the parties, a hung parliament had occurred. The Socialist Nationals decided to form a coalition with the Democrats, with B.P. Koirala both unwilling and unable to reach an agreement with the Revolutionary Nationals. King Tribhuvan had played a significant part in this deal, suspicious of the Revolutionary Nationals' close ties to the Communist Party of Nepal, and had directly recommended an NNC(S)-NDC coalition to the Koirala brothers.

### 1948-1952 — First M.P. Koirala Government and the Raksha Dal

Although Subarna Shamsher Rana had led the Democrats as the largest party, M.P. Koirala was instead chosen to serve as Prime Minister of Nepal. Though the reasons for this are unclear, it's speculated that Koirala's popularity and prominent role within the Revolution would lead to a more stable government. M.P. would be inaugurated later that year, with Subarna serving as Deputy Prime Minister. King Tribhuvan was heavily dissatisfied with this decision, stating that the post should have gone towards the most successful candidate rather than the most popular. Tribhuvan had heavy personal disagreements with M.P, and began to wrangle for power

M.P.'s government immediately faced an internal crisis, as the 1948 elections had been called early to consolidate legitimacy, and as a result the government had not truly been built on a stable ground yet. The split within the Nepali Congress had fractured its militant wing, the Nepali Congress's Liberation Army, into three pieces among party lines. Paramilitaries associated with the Socialist Nationals and the Democrats willfully absorbed themselves into the new Army of Nepal. However, those loyal to Singh's Revolutionary Nationals, the Raksha Dal, refused to join the new Army and remained in control of large swaths of the countryside.

Seeing the Koiralas as traitors to Nepalese democracy, the Raksha Dal had become further radicalized in its support for K.I. Singh, as his heavy-handed populism contrasted with the newly-formed, already unpopular government. Singh and his Revolutionary Nationals garnered support directly from the Indian National Congress, which saw him as a major potential ally in the event that China were to reclaim Tibet. Fearing the potential of mutiny, King Tribhuvan ordered the Raksha Dal to immediately disband, utilizing emergency powers to order the Nepali Army to purge the militia. India, closely monitoring the purge of the Raksha Dal, had already held reservations against the Democrats' role in the coalition. The nation's support of the Revolutionary Nationals became an open secret as they covertly allowed Raksha Dal members to flee across the border.

### 1952 parliamentary election

The Communist Party and the Nepal National Congress (Revolutionary), closely-aligned in forming the official Opposition, formed the United Democratic Front alliance in 1952, in a bid to oust the NNC(S)-NDC coalition in that year's elections. The coalition itself showed signs of breaking apart, as the NDC had drifted further to the center-right. The crackdown of the Raksha Dal led to mass protests in Kathmandu, led by Ram Prasad Rais republican faction. This caused many minor parties to shift their favor towards the United Democratic Front, even as the alliance drifted further towards India and the left.

The King's usage of his emergency powers so swiftly after the revolution caused conspiracies to emerge, speculating that the M.P. government was an intermediary for an impending royalist coup d'état. Using M.P.'s reluctant favor, Tribhuvan gained exponential political influence, but took care to maintain his public image: despite his reservations, he genuinely supported the democratic system and openly denied a desire for increased power. Despite calls from the political right to ban the Communist Party, citing the overthrow of the Norwegian monarchy as an example, Tribhuvan refused to crack down on the popular left. Instead, Tribhuvan advised the Socialist Nationals to focus on appealing to rural peasantry, historically associated with communist farmers' unions, on an economically left-wing and socially moderate platform. This was intended as a counter to the progressivism of the UDF, meant to offset its gains in Kathmandu. This gamble paid off after the election, allowing M.P. to score an upset second mandate as Prime Minister in a year that seemed guaranteed for the Opposition.

### 1952-1955 — The Second M.P. Koirala Government

Dissatisfied with the loss of a seemingly easy election, Singh blamed the UDF's defeat on rural poverty, which his party claimed restricted people's ability to vote despite universal suffrage being enacted in the Revolution. Members of farmers' unions were the most active voters in the countryside, and had trended heavily towards the Revolutionary Nationals and the Communists. However, with the Socialist Nationals making gains within these unions, the NNC(R) allowed its primary voting bloc to slip, forgoing a majority in the election.

As a result, the NNC(R) had a change of policy within the UDF, leaning closer towards the Communist Party and embracing a more uniform, collectivist policy in its agenda. Seeking to draw back farmers, Singh, as Leader of the Opposition, launched a long-term campaign to associate the NNC(S) with the political intelligentsia and the NDC with the Ranas, leaning even further into a populist stance. Rai, Singh's primary ally, would become Singh's “attack dog” for the next four years to follow, allowing him to retain a broad credibility while his party drifted to the left. While Rai let the party appeal towards Marxist tendencies, Singh would espouse nationalist rhetoric, using his ambiguous relationship with the Indian government to his advantage. Even though the Raksha Dal was in exile in Delhi, and his party itself had close ties with the INC, Singh espoused irredentist policies, advocating for the reclamation of the “unjust” cession of Uttarakhand. This was an intentional strategy: by openly forwarding Nepalese nationalism, the Revolutionary Nationals could gain ground with all factions in Nepal, which still remained devastated from the Second Weltkrieg.