Is Nepal reverting to monarchy?  

Ex-King Gyanendra offers to “save the country” as successive elected governments have fail to deliver the goods whether in terms of political stability, economic development or international standing.

By P.K.Balachandran

Colombo, March 14 – Last Sunday, Nepal’s former King Gyanendra Shah was greeted by a massive crowd of flag-waving supporters as he arrived in Kathmandu from Pokhara after attending pro-monarchy rallies in various parts of the country.

Gyanendra had lost power in 2008 when Nepal became a Constitutional Monarchy. He lost it totally in 2015 when monarchy itself was abolished.

After staying out of controversy from 2008 onwards, Gyanendra made a statement on Nepal’s Democracy Day in February in which he said that he was willing “to play a role in saving the country” as successive elected governments have fail to deliver the goods whether in terms of political stability, economic development or international standing.

His statement coincided with a sudden surge in pro-monarchy posts and videos on social media. These posts glorified Nepalese kings of the past and said that Nepal was respected by the international community when the monarchs were calling the shots at home. Nepal’s monarchists and other anti-government forces consider the current public disillusionment with the country’s ageing and ineffective leaders a “breaking point.”

One of the staunchest backers of Gyanendra’s comeback as King is former BBC journalist Rabindra Mishra, who has been active on social media platforms posting videos and texts extolling Nepal’s monarchs of the past. He also refers to street uprisings in Sri Lanka (the Aragalaya) and the July-August students ’movement in Bangladesh, and the earlier Arab Spring movement across West Asia as a warning to the powers-that-be in Kathmandu. He cautions Nepal’s mainstream leaders about dismissing the growing support for monarchy in the country.

“Support for a return to monarchy is increasing even though  mainstream parties may be dismissing it. Like the leaders of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, they should not try to suppress the voices on the streets,” Mishra advised.

Nepal’s decrepit and faction-ridden leadership, is worried. The ban on TikTok last year was indicative of the disquiet among the rulers, though it was proclaimed that the ban was meant to “maintain social harmony”. The ban was eventually lifted under public pressure.

Monarchists have posted archival video clips of King Mahendra (1955-1972) being received by US President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960, and King Birendra being received by President Reagan in 1983. These clips were liked by thousands of viewers. Comments on the videos contrasted these images with the disdain with which world leaders had been looking at the current crop of Prime Ministers.

The crowd which welcomed Gyanendra on Sunday was a mix of the young and the old – the former fed up with the incompetence of  present-day politicians and the latter filled with nostalgia about the past.

But critics of the monarchist trend point out that most of the present generation have no idea of the lack of freedom under an absolutist ruler. Veteran journalist Guna Raj Luitel, Chief Editor of Nagarik Daily, pointed out in an op-ed on Sunday, that monarchy had not done any useful work. It had only shut voices of dissent.

Anti-monarchist commentators are also pointing to Gyanendra’s military-backed coup in 2005 when he dissolved parliament, and tried to take the country back to the time of absolute monarchy of the kind which existed under his father, King Mahendra, in the 1960s.

Gyanendra became King controversially after his brother and most of his family were killed in the royal palace massacre in 2001. Many Nepalis believe that Gyanendra was responsible for the massacre because he was a beneficiary. Some of this is reflected in comments on social media at present.

Prime Minister’s Reaction

Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli said last week that if Gyanendra really wanted power, he should form a political party and run in the next elections in 2027. In response, royalists including Kamal Thapa, Rajendra Lingden, and Rabindra Mishra, said that monarchy is above the electoral system. Gyanendra should be “installed” as King and not made to face an election, they said.

“There is no question of the King contesting an election, it is our job to contest elections,” retorted the royalist Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (RPP).  “The monarchy is a custodian of the nation, it is an institution above electoral politics”.

However, not all monarchists want the same thing. While hardliners seek an absolute monarchy, moderates want a constitutional monarchy.

Maoist party chair and former Prime Minister Pushpakamal Dahal alias Prachanda alleged that mal-administration by the K.P.Oli government has resulted in a royalist upsurge. Speaking in the House of Representatives, Dahal said that the government’s incompetence had pushed people from all sectors and communities towards agitations even demanding a return to absolutism.

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But the Royalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party asked leaders supporting republicanism to start looking for hiding places. “The longer the leaders of this system remain in power, the bigger the crowds will get for Gyanendra,” its leader said.

Outside Support?

Maoist leader Dahal claimed that foreign forces were involved in the pro-monarchy rally of March 9 in Kathmandu. He did not name any outside force though. He urged royalists to search for a space under the existing democratic system, instead of wanting to replace it with autocracy.

It is noted that when Gyanendra visited Bhutan, he was given a royal welcome. He made several trips to India where there is support in some quarters for reinstating Nepal as the “world’s only Hindu Kingdom.” The Royalists of Nepal are in favour of setting up a Hindu theocratic State, not a secular State. And this has the support of the Hindutva lobby in India. The ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India is ideologically inclined to support an explicitly “Hindu” Nepal though the government of India has no official stand on it.

Yogi Adityanath’s poster in Rally

A portrait of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi  Adiyanath in Sunday’s Gyanendra rally caused a stir in Nepal. Prime minister Oli’s supporters described Adityanath’s poster as evidence of “India hand” behind Gyanendra, raising questions over the credibility of Sunday’s rally.

The pro-Gyanendra parties however shot back alleging that Adityanath’s posters had been “planted”, and calling it a conspiracy by the Oli government.

But as per the rally’s organisers, the use of Adityanath’s image neither had official sanction nor did they know about it, with the only instruction to participants being to use the national flag and Gyanendra’s portrait.

“We are not so weak as needing to use a foreigner’s photo in our procession,” said Dipak Gyawali, a former minister and pro-monarchist. What about Communists displaying portraits of Marx, Lenin, Mao etc at party offices, he asked.

However, relations between the Nepalese oyal family and the Gorakhnath mutt at Gorakhpur, of which Adityanath is currently the head, run deep and go back ages. Rajendra Lingden, the president of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), which was the main organiser of the Gyanendra rally, pointed to this, saying: “We don’t know about it (the Adityanath poster). But what we know and respect is that King Gyanendra has a deep connection of faith and respect with the Gorakhnath mutt, since the Shah dynasty is believed to have been blessed by Guru Gorakhnath.”

Gorakhnath remains the presiding deity of the Shah dynasty.

Chronic Instability

A key reason for the harking back to royalist days is the absence of stability in Nepal’s politics under democracy. Nepal had seen 13 governments in 16 years!

The same leaders occupy the top post of Prime Minister in turns, as in a merry go round. They form alliances only to break them within months. Personal and factional interests over-ride community and national interests. Lacking in a common agenda, agreements and coalitions break no sooner than they are made.

Royalists believe that it is necessary to have a single but legitimate source of power which is also fully empowered. And that should be a monarch who enforces Nepal’s widely accepted traditional values. Nepalese monarchs had held the country together and also kept foreign imperial forces at bay, whether these were the British ensconced in neighbouring India, or the Chinese across the Himalayas.

END