THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

ela t i ves. The edilcat ional sys tem~ also brought back, and brought in,
educated individuals to the community from outside. With these
individuals and the school system came ideas which impinged on people's
sense of identity and perceptions of the environment. Perhaps the most
significant of these, at least during the time of our fieldwork, were
those associated with the political changes which were taking place.
The teachers and some of the students were very involved in these
changes, which form the subject matter of the next section.
8.3 Politics
The same teacher who had led the school in the hGmro raja, h8mro
d& poem, took the lead only two months later in a communist rally
denouncing the monarchy." In Chapter One I described the political
unrest in Kathmandu which led the king to rescind the pancGvat system
(and with it, much of his power) and to agree to the holding of party-
based elections. On our return to Tamaphok a few weeks later we could
see how the events of April 1990 were affecting the village. In order
to understand better what went on at that time, however, i t is necessary
to look at the recent history of national politics, and at the
particular political configurations of Tamaphok.
The Old Regime
In 1952, following the overthrow of the Rana regime, the then King
Tribhuvan established an interim government by council composed of five
Ranas, five Congress party members and one member appointed by the king.
This led to a brief fourteen month spell of democracy based on more
conventional party-political models, brought to a sudden termination by