Jail Journal
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Jail Diary of BP Koirala

Explanatory notes in parenthesis are given to help readers locate the characters in BP Koirala's personal and political life - Editor.
  • July 8, 1968:

    Received Sushila's letter, telling me that she would be leaving on Sunday. She writes that she is leaving Kathmandu with a heavy heart and with anxious mind about my health. She has written a sad letter. As a result of Subarnaji statement and his offer of cooperation to the King on the latter's terms, she felt as others that we would be released soon. Sushila writes that she even wrote to the King about the timorous growth in my intestine, but her letter went unacknowledged. I am myself very much worried about my health. I get constant pain in my stomach and back and near the region of testes. The pain has affected my psychology also; I have become gloomy. The idea of death has seized my imagination. I am not afraid of death; but to be uncertain about the seriousness of the disease that has affected my intestine - whether the growth is benign or malignant - is nerve-breaking. If I die - that will be the end of me - I will be no more to feel it. But I don not want leave the world so soon, because I want to work for 15 more years after my release with vigor for my political cause, during which period our children will also have grown to manhood and settled in their different professions and occupations. The youngest among the children is Chetana (Chetana Koirala, daughter of BP Koirala) who is nine years old now. I want her to be 24 years old before I die. In Nepal's politics I have yet some role to play. If I am removed now from the scene, there will be no leader of the opposition to the despotic monarchy that reigns today. Communism may come ultimately, but I want to interpose a democratic system in the meantime between monarchy and communism. To be able to work for a cause is an exciting thing. Monarchy is entrenched today, but it is too anachronistic a system to be viable. If capitalism can live in democracy, then I see no reason why communism cannot. I want to live for another 15 years so that I may devote my last period of life to the cause of democracy and happiness of my people and thus make the period the most fruitful and satisfying.

    Worry over my health is dominating my psychology to such an extent that I have become incapacitated for any intellectual work. I read only newspapers, magazines and light literature. I have started to attend the reading session in the morning in which Sherchand reads out passages from "Eastern Philosophy", a book written by Russell. This attendance does not entail much intellectual effort on my part. I superficially participate in the discussions that accompany the reading of the passages. Today's passage referred to the theological and philosophical ideas of Augustine. I have not been able to be clear about Augustine's ideas contained in the book. My difficulty is that I want to understand Augustinian ideas in terms of freedom which has been the quest of philosophy through ages. The question as to who is supreme - Christ or Caesar - is not a mere theological question. Christianity at that time was giving a fight in the interest of values which, according to it, could not come within the mischief of the sovereignty of the state. Even if moral questions were made non-religious the issue remains that part of Man's personal freedom is inviolate and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the state. The question is also relevant to the current discussion between monolithic state and pluralistic society.

    I sometimes feel that if one has no religion, he must have the courage to take its place. A man without God has to have courage to face trials and tribulations of life. Either God or courage. Sufferings of life are borne either with humility and surrender or with forbearance and stoicism. Humility is the strength of the weak; stoicism is the pride of the strong. A sensitive man must have either the religious humility or the prideful stoicism.