Nepal’s troubled Shah dynasty faces extinction

NEPAL: When Prithvi Narayan Shah, the forefather of Nepal’s current King Gyanendra, finally conquered Kathmandu in 1768, he did so on the day of the most important festival of the year, Inrdra Jatra.

The kings who had ruled Kathmandu Valley for centuries before the Shah invasion worshipped a young girl who was the living incarnation of a powerful Hindu goddess, and when she blessed Shah over the fled Malla kings, his conquest was spiritually sealed.

Every year since, Nepal’s kings have gone to receive blessings from the girl but this year after the king has been stripped of most of his powers he will most likely not be going, as his 238-year-old dynasty hangs in the balance.

The biggest political party announced late last week it was set to back a republic in November elections and fiercely republican former rebel Maoists have ended their decade-long people’s war and entered government.

The polls to elect a body to rewrite the constitution could be the endgame in an incredibly turbulent dynastic history.

In the 18th century, Gyanendra’s forefather, Prithvi Narayan Shah, was king of Gorkha, a small hill kingdom in central Nepal that was not particularly fertile nor on any trade route. But the king had big ambitions.

One of at least 60 kingdoms between the Himalayas to the north and the southern plains bordering India, the Shah dynasty founder used political wiles and force to conquer dozens of kingdoms and create what became known as modern Nepal.

“His success was due to effective military leadership and his ability to play other states off against each other,” John Whelpton, author of “A History of Nepal,” said.

The jewels in the crown of his conquests were three towns — Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan — nestled in the fertile Kathmandu valley, epicentre of a major India-China trade route

Still seen today as an impressive military leader and shrewd political operator, Prithvi established the kingship that passed down the male line and ruled until his death in 1775.

Proving leadership is not hereditary, his heirs were a much less impressive bunch, historians say.

After his death in 1775, “Nepal was ruled for the next 70 years by kings who were either underage, inept, insane or all three,” wrote Manjushree Thapa in a history of Nepal, “Forget Kathmandu (An Elegy for Democracy).”

Kings were allowed to take numerous wives which meant conflicts over succession, intrigue and killings.

“Successive kings, family members and courtiers were involved in power struggles, and many of the Shah kings of this time did not die natural deaths,” said royal expert Sanu Bhai Dangol.

Events came to a head in the 19th century when a regent queen, Rajyalaksmi Shah, summoned her advisors, furious that one of her aides — believed to have been her lover — had been murdered.

After her orders to execute the suspected culprit were defied, she tried to kill him herself. The row triggered court in-fighting, leaving 55 people dead, and prompted the prominent Rana family to take power and declare themselves “hereditary prime ministers.” By the early 20th century, the Shahs were “virtual prisoners of the Rana maharajas,” Thapa said.

The Ranas kept the Shahs under tight control until 1950 when King Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah told his overlords he planned to leave his palace for a hunting trip but fled to the Indian embassy and was spirited to Delhi. Tribhuvan departed with most of his family but left his toddler grandson, Prince Gyanendra, today’s king, whom the Ranas enthroned as a child monarch.

The royals’ flight combined with unrest by outlawed political parties meant the Ranas were forced to end their 104-year rule in 1951.

After negotiations between the Shahs, parties and the Ranas, it was agreed the king would return as a constitutional monarch under a democratically elected government.

But it was not to last. Nepal had a nine-year flirtation with democracy that Tribhuvan’s successor, Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah, ended with a royal coup in 1960.

“The parties were unprepared to govern, some say. Others say the king, his family and courtiers undermined democracy, schemed for its downfall,” Thapa said.

Mahendra introduced a form of governance that became known as the Panchayat system, dubbed a “party-less democracy,” with him as leader.

His direct rule continued until 1990 when Mahendra’s son, Birendra, was forced to allow democracy in the face of popular protests and to allow political parties to operate.

Tragedy struck the Shah family in 2001 when Birendra’s son, Dipendra, whose parents had stopped him marrying the woman he loved, went on a drink-and-drug-fuelled rampage and massacred nine members of the royal family, including popular King Birendra, and then apparently turned the gun on himself.

Already disliked due to conspiracy theories linking him to the massacre, his unpopularity deepened when he fired the government and seized control in 2005.

His authoritarian rule lasted 14 months, until massive protests by political parties and rebel Maoists forced him to climb down in April 2006.

Today, Gyanendra is powerless, living as a recluse in one of his palaces and awaiting the November elections to see whether his dynasty has any future in the impoverished nation.

Kathmandu, Sunday, AFP