Nepal: A Neutral Cockpit

This is the time of year in Nepal, the small kingdom perched in the Himalayas between India and China, when mountain goats, buffaloes and chickens are slaughtered to appease the Hindu gods and ensure good fortune for the coming twelve months. Nepal’s King Mahendra, 47, is himself revered by his 10 million subjects as a god incarnate, but he does not trust his kingdom’s fate entirely to heavenly hands. This week he was off to Washington to see Lyndon Johnson, in the hope that the coming year will bring an ample number of gifts stamped “Made in U.S.A.” Accompanied by his petite wife, Queen Ratna, and Crown Prince Birenda, a Harvard student, the King will try to persuade the President of the need and importance of aiding Nepal, to which the U.S. has contributed $98 million since World War II.

The diplomatic talents of the canny poet King are as cool as his mile-high capital of Katmandu. He has not only managed to keep his landlocked, Wisconsin-size nation from being swallowed up by its giant neighbors but has turned Nepal into a highly profitable “neutral cockpit”—as admiring diplomats call it—by letting all the world’s great rivals pay handsomely for his friendship. The Chinese have given a shoe factory, a warehouse complex and a highway that cuts strategically through the mountains from Red-held Tibet to Katmandu. India, which dominates Nepal’s foreign commerce and is pledged to defend the kingdom, has built a rival road south from Katmandu toward Calcutta. The Russians have chipped in with a cigarette plant and a sugar refinery. The U.S. is working on rural development, malaria eradication, family planning and education. It also hopes to participate, along with India, Britain and Russia, in Mahendra’s most ambitious scheme: a third major highway that will open up the fertile ricelands to the impoverished Nepalese mountain tribes.

Awesome Real Estate. Early in his reign, Mahendra decided that a country just awakening from the somnolence of the Middle Ages and still 93% illiterate needed strong leadership from the throne. In 1960, introducing Pakistani-style “controlled democracy,” he abolished political parties, put the election of the legislature on an indirect basis and clapped potential troublemakers in jail. This has left him free to emancipate women and untouchables, end polygamy and begin breaking up Nepal’s feudal estates.

Mahendra has also worked hard to promote tourism. As the custodian of seven of the world’s eight highest mountain peaks and, like his Sherpa tribesmen, a mountaineer himself, he recognizes the spectacular attraction of Nepalese real estate. The most exciting of several new tourist hotels is Tigertops, which is built on stilts (like Kenya’s Tree Tops) overlooking Nepal’s fabled tiger country. Nepal also has some less awesome sights, such as Katmandu’s Hindu temples, whose timbers are decorated with erotic carvings designed to frighten off the virginal goddess of lightning. Obviously they are not frightening off foreigners. Last year 12,500 visited Nepal and, if Mahendra can continue to keep his neighbors quiet, many more are expected to visit his lofty realm this year.