The liberal Rana

Himalaya Shumsher Rana, first governor of Nepal Rastra Bank, first finance secretary and international civil servant, died age 95 on 5 February.

A witness to political and seismic upheavals in Nepal and abroad during the last nearly 100 years, he was one of Nepal's ‘progressive Ranas’ who worked to institutionalise democracy before and after the changes in 1951.

After a brief stint with Subarna Shumsher and the democracy movement, Rana did not get into politics, preferring to lay foundations to professionalise Nepal’s nascent financial and banking system.

As secretary in the Ministry of Finance, he established the Department of Customs, set up the Auditor General’s office, and started the tradition of announcing the annual budget. New bank notes of various denominations were issued in 1959.

Later, as the first governor of Nepal’s central bank which was established in 1957, Rana began the three-year long process of replacing the double currency in use in the country at the time with solely the Nepali rupee as legal tender.

Also as Rastra Bank governor, Rana fixed the exchange rate between the Indian and Nepali rupees, removing the fluctuating value determined arbitrarily by businessmen. The central bank fixed the exchange rate at Rs1.6 for an Indian rupee — which has remained constant for the past nearly 70 years.

“He always cautioned against tampering with the INR-NPR currency exchange rate,” recalls Krishna Bahadur Manandhar, the former deputy governor of Nepal Rastra Bank. “There was an attempt later to bring the two currencies to 1:1 parity, but that did not last long. It shows just how far-sighted he was.”

After King Mahendra’s coup in 1960 when Nepal’s first elected Parliament was dissolved, Prime Minister B P Koirala  removed and jailed, Rana was sacked. The Palace had always been suspicious of his professionalism, independent views, and liberal democratic values.

Rana then joined the United Nations and served for the next four decades in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, living through political turmoil in those countries — all recounted with personalised details in his memoir.

A second updated edition of his book Reminiscences and Reflections is due to be published later this year. He was also working on an insider look at the Rana family.

Rana returned to Nepal in 1993, and established Himalayan Bank in partnership with Pakistan’s Habib Bank. Even in retirement he oversaw the signing of its merger agreement with Civil Bank last year.

He was also conferred Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese Ambassador to Nepal in May 2022 in recognition of the Rastra Bank opening its first foreign account in the Bank of Japan in 1957. Also an avid footballer, he was the captain of the New Road Team (NRT) which was, besides sports, active in mobilising youths against the Rana regime.

Rana helped set up Gorkha Brewery to produce Tuborg and Carlsberg in Nepal under license from its Danish owners.

He used his considerable diplomatic skills to try to broker a peace deal between the government and Maoist rebels during the insurgency in 2004.