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

silent in group situations, were highlighted as odious. These problems
may have been part of Brahmin-Chetri tradition, but were not shared by
the Yakha. The political debates, by offering comparative mode!s in
this way, may have helped to cement a stronger, more positive feeling of
Yakha identity. The initiation of news bulletins in Hindi and Newari on
the radio also aroused interest and ethnic sensibilities. People
jokingly asked how long it would be before news bulletins in Yakha
appeared.
The communists were the only party active in the vil!age in the
first few months after the success of the pro-democracy movement.
However, after the euphoria of the first few weeks, the tenor of the
debates gradually changed, More materia! of a "lest one forget" quality
(Burghart and Gaenszle, !991:5) appeared. Bhaskar and Sharada hung up a
communist calendar with gruesome pictures of the corpses of the 'martyrs
for democracy' in their quarters. At the new video ha1 1 in Basantapur
it was possible to see an equally brutal video of the disturbances in
Kathmandu and the lynching a few weeks later of pol icemen suspected of
being msNDale (undercover government agents), More hard-line communists
from other parts of the region flowed into Tamaphok to address meetings
and mobilize support. There was a fear that the king was trying to
wheed!e his way back into power through the new constitution on which
the interim government was working. Certainly we noticed how on Radio
Nep~ !, despite the Gulf crisis, the king had reestablished his
position at the start of most news bulletins regardless of what he had
been doing. All these factors contributed to a hardening of the
communist position, This in turn promoted a backlash from those !ess
committed to the communist cause.