Two months ago King Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva brusquely jailed Prime Minister B. P. Koirala, thus bringing an abrupt end to the first government ever to be elected democratically in Nepal. Then, the King explained ingeniously that he had acted because the Koirala government was "killing the people's democratic aspirations." Last week, talking to a TIME correspondent in Katmandu, the King gave a more candid reason: "The Koirala government was always trying to put me in an awkward position . . . It preached that the King was standing in the...
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