Aditi Phadnis: Nepal's ruling monarch

PLAIN POLITICS

After the mandatory one-year mourning period following the massacre of his brother King Birendra, His Majesty King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah of Nepal was felicitated by his people at various places in Nepal.

A reception at Pokhara six months ago was his fourth. He made a speech there which gave no clue to what he was really thinking.

In a voice quivering with emotion, he said: "Nepal will be an example to the rest of the world of a democracy co-existing with a monarchy. In our country, the monarchy is for democracy. That is the way it should be in the 21st century".

The Nepalese listened to him and clapped their hands and India nodded with approval at his wisdom. Wasn't this what they had been telling him all along?

Well, King Gyanendra must be laughing his head off in the Narayanhity Palace now. None of the music of the 21st century "" the harsh tones of the modem and the melodies of the mobile telephone "" could be heard in Nepal for the first few days after emergency was declared.

Press freedom and the right to free speech, taken so much for granted by the Nepalese for the last 15 years, are suspended. A Nepalese scholar in Delhi said uncomfortably: " I really don't want to talk. I have to return to Kathmandu".

So what made King Gyanendra do this, decide to become a ruling monarch instead of a reigning one? Will the people of Nepal, who have refused to be colonised but have submitted to the crushingly feudal rule of the King and his cohorts, the Ranas, for the last 250 years, accept their renewed subjugation? Who is responsible for the present state of affairs? And where will Nepal go from here?

What the monarchy has done to Nepal and why there was a repeated cry to make Nepal a people's republic cannot be illustrated better than this incident.

Two years ago, the former Ambassador of Nepal in New Delhi, Bhekh Bahadur Thapa (who has incidentally "" and disappointingly "" endorsed the King's action) organised in New Delhi an exhibition of period photographs of life in Kathmandu at the turn of the last century.

Among the pictures was a triptych of labourers poring over a magnificent Mercedes Benz, another picture of a beetle-line of labourers bent over double, carrying pieces of machinery in a doko (basket) up a mountain path, and the third of a very young King posing in full royal regalia against the Mercedes.

The triptych, Thapa explained, represented the progression of the Royal Car. Nepal's only road in the 1900s existed around the Palace in Kathmandu. It was built for the convenience of the Raja.

The King wanted to drive a car. But how was the car to be transported to Kathmandu in the absence of a road? He had labourers dismantle the car, physically carry the pieces to Kathmandu and reassemble it there so that he could have his sawari. This was the extent of Royal decadence.

And this is a minor example. Little wonder then, that the priority of Leftwing extremists in Nepal is not to establish a classless society but a more representative republic. And they wouldn't mind the UN intervening in Nepal, if it could help them do this! Are there any Maoists in the world who are for a UN role? Hard to say.

For a long time, India was also fascinated by the avatar of Vishnu in their midst, to the extent that the wife of one one of India's earliest Ambassadors in Kathmandu actually went to the Palace to worship the avatar! Obviously the King was captivated by his own vision.

After Birendra was killed and there was a blip in the sacred inheritance when Gyanendra ascended the throne, he came to India, to worship at the Kamakhya temple at Guwahati.

An autographed picture of Birendra hangs at the Raj Bhavan. Gyanendra eyed the picture with some disfavour and it had to be explained to him that it was Birendra's personal gift to the temple, that's why his picture was up, rather than Gyanendra's.

Gyanendra's life began with a thwarted attempt at becoming King. At four, he was briefly crowned monarch, but had to renounce his claim when brother Birendra took over.

In a country where the monarchy is among the biggest amassers of capital, Gyanendra switched professions and became a businessman. He had (has?) stakes in the Soaltee Oberoi, in Nepal's Surya Tobacco Company and extensive tea gardens in Jhapa which provide raw material for Nepal's best known brand of 'chiya' "" until he became King and readers of English newspapers in Nepal found a story informing them that he had divested his stakes in all these business enterprises.

He was also a trustee of the King Mahendra Trust for Nature, and only recently we heard that the Trust had taken over the running of natural parks in Nepal which comprise 18 per cent of Nepal's total area guarded by 4,000 Royal Nepal Army (RNA) troops. Poaching and timber-smuggling is big business in Nepal. The RNA is controlled by the King.

At the heart of Nepal's problems is this: the King controls the RNA and he derives from the constitution powers to suspend the constitution. The writing was on the wall when he dissolved Parliament in May 2002 and dismissed the government a few months later.

Sher Bahadur Deuba, who had parted ways with the Nepali Congress to willingly 'help' the King run the democracy, found himself out of a job for 'incompetence'. The charge against him? That he had failed to control the Maoists. But how could he when it was the King who controlled the RNA? Anyway, the King appointed his own nominees as PM and when they couldn't do the job either, he hired Deuba again, only to sack him again.

So since Gyanendra became King, the power initiative in Nepal has been with the King. He has been known to tell politicians in the morning, he was ready to make them Prime Minister, and in the evening appoint someone else. Kathmandu is a small place. Such negotiations cannot remain secret for long.

Political parties have made their share of mistakes. During G P Koirala's Prime Ministership, his defence minister Govindraj Joshi criticised in Parliament the functioning of the RNA and the King.

He was sacked the next morning, obviously following the King's intervention. During the same period, Koirala, who was himself in jail for eight years prior to democracy, relaxed the rule that those arrested by the police must be produced in court within 24 hours.

But in this round, it is the King who has made the biggest mistake. In the short term, there is no doubt that with the RNA by his side, he is supreme and unchallenged. But Nepal in 2005 is not Nepal in 1960 when democracy was first thwarted. You could question the extent of the popularity of the Maoists.

But every child in the villages of Nepal knows who G P Koirala is, discredited though he might be. With the Maoist organisation and with G P Koirala as a symbol, all that Nepal needs is an underground communication system. The people of Nepal have now learnt to speak. And no one, not even the King, can take that right away from them.