Nepal on the edge

It was that old fox, essayist Walter Bagehot, living in an age which saw Victorian imperium at its efflorescence, who analysed the institution of monarchy best. ‘‘Above all things,’’ he said, ‘‘royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it...its mystery is its life. We must not let daylight upon ma-gic.’’ This unrepentant monarchist knew well enough that, ultimately, royalty is just elaborate subterfuge. It needed the ceaseless strife of the 20th century, the people’s century, to let daylight upon that often diabolic magic.

The circumstances of the last supper at Kathmandu’s Narayan Hity Royal Palace last week may remain shrouded in mystery, as the palace lords and their spin meisters seek to recast the massacre of the royal family in a fashion that would do the least damage to an institution which is already under grave threat. But these efforts notwithstanding, Nepal’s Bloody Friday may well be one of those turning points in the history of the nation — an event so comprehensive in scope, so decisive in impact, that there can be no turning back.

Despite Nepal’s decade-old engagement with democracy and the transformation of the king from being an absolute ruler to a constitutional one, there can be no denying that monarchy continues to play a crucial role in the public life of the nation. The huge crowds on Kathmandu’s streets on the day of the funerals, the spontaneous shaving of heads as symbolic of personal bereavement and the intermittent beating of breasts speak of a deeply perceived loss, at least for some.

Even the casual visitor to Kathmandu cannot but notice photographs of the royal family on the walls of shops and private homes and pause awhile at the towering gates of the royal place on Durbar Marg — one of the few luxuriant patches of opulence amidst the encircling urban squalor of Kathmandu. In fact, any account of the history of Nepal is invariably bound with that of the royal family and usually begins with the year 1768, when King Prithvi Narayan Shah, from the small kingdom of the Gorkha, set upon the Kathmandu Valley and conquered it from the Newaris.

The narrative will, of course, also include the Kot massacre of 1846, which saw the rise of the Ranas — the line of hereditary prime ministers, who exercised absolute power for the next 100 years. The Ranas reduced the king to a titular head and controlled the people through a complex code, the caste-based Muluki Ain, or Law of the Nation. But, interestingly, even the Ranas assiduously cultivated the idea of the king as the incarnation of Lord Vishnu, since monarchy was seen to be a useful device to achieve social cohesion in a multi-ethnic, multilingual society like that of Nepal.

The mid-20th century witnessed the end of Rana rule, but it wasn’t until 1990 that Prithvi Narayan Shah’s descendant, the recently assassinated King Birendra, had to face his moment in daylight — forced to decide between initiating major political reform or facing the wrath of a people clamouring not just for democracy but an end to palace corruption and abuse of power. King Birendra’s response to those turbulent days, termed as ‘spring awakening’ by Martin Hoftun and William Raeper in their definitive account of that period, was extremely cautious. He didn’t give up power at the first whiff of resistance but waited it out till the last. The palace even came up with an alternative constitution, which sought to retain more powers with the king. Incidentally, the new king, Gyanendra, is believed to have played a pivotal role in trying to counter the democracy movement. It took over a year for this process to play itself out — from Democracy Day, February 18, 1990, when people took to the streets demanding a democratic political order, to May 12, 1991, when multi-party elections were held under a new constitution.

The debates on the role of the king thrown up in that interregnum could provide clues to Nepal’s future trajectory. Basically, three points of view emerged. The Communists, who enjoyed a significant presence in the political space, wanted a clean break with the past and an end to monarchy. The Nepali Congress wished to retain the institution while denying the king any real power. The palace envisaged sovereignty remaining with the king ‘‘and the people’’. The big question of that period, which still hasn’t quite gone away, is whether the palace will ever try and snatch its power back, like King Mahendra had done in 1960 after an experiment with partial democracy. On the other hand, the monarchy being overthrown for all time under a future Communist dispensation is also within the realm of possibility.

In any case, the constitution of 1990 put a democratically elected parliament in place, even as it made a token bow to monarchy. Its preamble began with the full Sanskrit title of the king, which covered half a page, and it also stated that the royal family was not required to pay taxes. Once democracy was instituted, the palace was quick to claim it as its brainchild. As one of King Birendra’s courtiers had remarked at that time, ‘‘The king is very conscious that his family is there to serve the interests of the Nepalese people.’’

But Nepal’s tragedy is that no force, not the kings, nor the Ranas, nor indeed its elected governments, have served the interests of the people. Part of the problem is the extractive nature of its economy. Nepal is divided into three ecological zones: the terai, the hills and the mountains. The terai region, largely comprising the Kathmandu Valley and its environs, has been the locus of all development in the country, albeit of the most unplanned kind. This region feeds in turn on the hills where roughly half the population ekes out a living. If the Ranas and the kings didn’t invest in the lives of the hill people, neither did the 10 elected governments that came and went over the last 10 years, with the partial exception of the Congress government of B.P. Koirala, which tried to introduce land reform in 1959 but was soon dismissed for its pains. Today, the centuries-old exploitative order remains relatively intact and the fact that Maoism has a stronger base in Nepal than anywhere else, testifies to that.

Development activists have argued that unless the hills are brought centrestage, unless its rich natural resources, especially its jala shakti or water, are used, not to feed the monstrous appetites of the people in the plains, but to transform the lives of its people, nothing will change. In 1994, D. Gyawali, a water engineer, commented thus in an article in the Kathmandu-based magazine, Himal, ‘‘Today, it is the hefty commissions in making large purchases for development projects, or renting out state patronage through licences and permits, that is driving the newly forming political elite from hard but correct decisions on behalf of the people... Nepal’s elites are the gods that have failed.’’ His words still ring true.

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