It is not very often that someone who has contributed to the making of his country's history also finds the time to record for posterity his own interpretation of the contemporary events; what is even more rare is that he finds the time to analyse the development of his own country's ethos over the centuries and brings to bear on his own work a profound stamp of his own humanist concerns. The two latest books by Rishikesh Shaha, Nepal's eminent statesman-historian, bear eloquent testimony as much to his scholarship as to his affection and deep concern for the people and institutions of Nepal.
His work, Ancient and Medieval Nepal, is a storehouse of information in 155 pages. It delineates in a few bold strokes the historical processes and forces which over the centuries contributed to the moulding of the kingdom in its present shape. It is not merely a narrative of the battles amongst kings or of intrigues amongst nobles. It describes vividly how the hill peoples in Central Himalaya coalesced into cogent political units, later shaped into a strong fortress-state of Nepal in the late 17th century by the political-military genius of Prithvi Narayan Shah. The contribution of the Lichhavi as well as of the Malla rulers is put in perspective in the chapters on social conditions, religion and art and architecture.
The first draft of this work was prepared during the authors' imprisonment in 1969-70. Thereafter, the work lay unpublished for almost 20 years. The books appearance on the bookstands after the recent revolutionary transformation in Nepal heightens its relevance to the reawakened conscience of the Nepali people. This is important because, as John K. Locke says in the foreword, failure to root the new order in the culture and tradition of the nation will produce "a bewildered society".
Shaha's other book, Politics in Nepal, which covers the turbulent developments between 1980 and 1991, is a collection of essays which serves to bring the reader up-to-date with modem Nepal (344 pages). However, while revising the work, Shaha has sacrificed some useful essays appearing in the first edition, which was titled Essays in the Practice of Government in Nepal.