Nepal lost crucial decades because of this coup. In the ’60s and ’70s, when India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were establishing themselves, if turbulently, as republics, Nepal was suffering the resurgence of the Shah dynasty. Entire generations grew up having to study propaganda, being indoctrinated with gobbledygook during panchayat rule. The effect of that is still with us. We are just getting round to examining ourselves honestly, to understanding ourselves at last.

The last king, Birendra Bir Bikram Shah, may have been a nice guy; but a visionary he wasn’t. Do not let any Nepali tell you that they worshipped him as divine, an incarnation of Vishnu: that is a tourism-industry fantasy propagated, these days, by parachute journalists and fly-by-night foreign “experts”. A thin-edged crust of Nepal’s population may be god-fearing; but nobody took the king for a god. And the country’s young groundswell is decidedly secular. The truth is that Nepalis were chanting “Bire thief, leave the country,” in the democracy movement of 1989, well before transferring that slogan to his disastrous successor, Gyanendra Shah.

As for Gyanendra Shah, called “Maila” (second son), or just “Gyane” by the people at large, it need not have gone this way. Had he learned from his elder brother’s example, he would have known that Nepalis like their kings powerless. Following 1990, as a constitutional monarch, Birendra Bir Bikram Shah had regained all his lost popularity, and more: the public mourning that followed his family’s massacre was not mere hysteria, it was genuine sorrow for the death of a king who had curtailed his personal powers to allow democracy. He used to wear simple clothes, speak politely, smile a lot, walk out of the palace on foot... all this endeared him to the public. Had his younger brother followed the same course, he might still be king today.

... contd.