Visitors coming to Nepal and expecting to feel the country´s "pulse" by reading the English papers and magazines will find themselves sadly out of touch. For, unlike every other country of South Asia, where English holds more than a toehold, here the lingua franca of Nepali holds overwhelming command. The disproportionate influence of the small English press derives from the diplomatic community and the expatriate "development set" which makes its readership. However, it is the Nepali press which touches the lives of the people and plays a role in guiding national politics, in ways good and bad.
Visitors coming to Nepal and expecting to feel the country´s "pulse" by reading the English papers and magazines will find themselves sadly out of touch. For, unlike every other country of South Asia, where English holds more than a toehold, here the lingua franca of Nepali holds overwhelming command. The disproportionate influence of the small English press derives from the diplomatic community and the expatriate "development set" which makes its readership. However, it is the Nepali press which touches the lives of the people and plays a role in guiding national politics, in ways good and bad.
Nepal never underwent the legacy of British colonialism that placed English as the language of the educated elite. This is why, unlike in other countries of the region, English language, and by extension the English press, is peripheral to the interests of those who make political decisions and form public opinion. Unfortunately, Nepali language journalism, while wielding overwhelming influence in modern Nepali society, remains in its infancy and unable to play the responsible role required of it as the "fourth estate" of modern democratic society. Looked at another way, however, the development of Nepali language journalism has been remarkable, given the social conditions against which it has had to struggle.
Until 1950, Nepali society was predominantly illiterate, and only the upper castes in the hill areas and a handful of aristocratic families in Kathmandu knew how to read and write. The autocratic Rana rulers tried mightily to prevent the ordinary people from entering the world of the printed word. Only in the first few decades of the twentieth century did Nepali "commoners" begin to write and publish, and that too from the safe havens of Benaras, Shillong, Darjeeling and Dehradun, in India.