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A King Loses the Crown The Moving Finger of History Writes
By: R.S. Mooshahary

One cold winter morning in February 2005, I was aboard an outbound BSF aircraft along with Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil at New Delhi airport. As the aircraft taxied the runway to take off, we were going through the newspapers; the bold lines screamed the news that King Gyanendra of Nepal had assumed direct power, placed many of the country's politicians under house arrest and severely restricted the civil liberties. Pointing out to the news, I told Mr Patil that the king was digging his own grave and that of his monarchy. Mr Patil said he too felt the same.

Shri Panch Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva came to occupy the throne out of that tragic incident of June 1, 2001 when the crown prince Deependra shot dead his parents — the king and the queen — and several other members of the royal family before shooting himself because he was not allowed to marry the girl he was in love with. It left no one to succeed to the throne and Gyanendra, the brother of the slain monarch, became king by default.

Gyanendra was the most unpopular king of his dynasty. Surely, he could read the writing on the wall — people despised him and they did so his wayward son, Paras, even more. His royal indiscretions hastened the eclipse of the Shah dynasty founded by King Prithvi Narayan Shah in 1768 by merging some 60 statelets. Late on a languid Wednesday, May 28, 2008,the Constituent Assembly overwhelmingly voted to abolish the monarchy and constitute “a secular, federal, democratic republic nation”.

Both India and Nepal are hugely Hindu-majority states — over 80 per cent of their populations are Hindus, and Nepal was the world’s only Hindu kingdom. Its conversion into a secular democratic republic goes to buttress the argument that Hinduism is essentially a tolerant faith, which does not believe in religious hegemony and allows all other faiths to coexist. The Maoists who were mainly responsible for this political frog-leap are Hindus who not long ago believed that their king was the reincarnation of Vishnu ruling the country to protect their life and liberty. The myth of this divine theory of kingship now lies buried in the superstitious soil of Nepal, and like this they must discard all other superstitions that enslave them to lowly existence without hope.

The monarchy itself was steeped in superstition. The king performed numerous rituals and visited places of worship to ward off evil forces that threatened his rule. He used to come down to Kamakhya to propitiate the goddess by sacrificing animals and birds. All that might have given him some temporary peace of mind but not a continued occupancy in Narayanhitti palace. He should have learned more of statecraft than the art of god and goddess propitiation, which failed him. He failed to learn from history and, to quote George Santayana, was doomed to repeat it.

While the change in Nepal is its internal matter, India cannot be indifferent to it. We have a 1,700-km-long open border with Nepal and a large part of central India has become Maoist stronghold. With the Maoists in control of the state apparatus in Kathmandu, India has to be extremely wary of the nexus of these groups which can further foment class-clash. The Pashupati-Tirpati red corridor that some Maoists seek to establish can cripple our civil administration in many pockets in our heartland if the government fails to anticipate the possibilities. Contrarily, the Maoists in power in Nepal can become a blessing in disguise because they can convince our Maoists that power does not always flow out of the barrel of gun but out of the ballot box.

We need to maintain greater check on the movement of people from Nepal to India. Though we have not been as alarmed about it as in the case the migration of Bangladeshis to India, the fact remains that there is no check for a citizen of Nepal to cross over to India and he can stay here without any fear of deportation. We are very liberal with the Nepalese transiting to India and the result is that some of them have even become members of our Parliament and Assembly.

Population pressure is mounting in Nepal with a density of 547 per square mile in a hilly landlocked country where just 16 per cent of the land is arable. With inflation at nine per cent, growth rate of just 2.5 per cent and unemployment at 42 per cent in their country, India offers a tantalizing prospect of better opportunity to the Nepalese, and since culturally and linguistically they are akin to Indians, they feel no strangers here. Its 29 million people growing at the rate of 2.1 per cent and most of them surviving on less than a dollar a day can literally make India their home and many of them have already done so; so will many more. India must not become a landing pad for the Nepalese diaspora.

Our relations with our neighbours have not been in the best of terms. With Nepal, the relations may take a different turn as the signals appearing from the Maoist leadership are rather worrisome. So far, we had to deal with only one person there — the king. Now we will have to handle many leaders and many groups at times in conflict with each other. The Maoists may tilt to China, being ideological cousins, than to India and they may cause many irritants to India. Thus, a new Nepal will need a new diplomacy from our South Block mandarins.The Nepalese have high expectations from the new dispensation under the democratic system, but given the dissention within the ruling parties, it will not be possible for the government to carry on with any assertive agenda. They are likely to pull in different directions with the Maoists trying to assume total control. They are already claiming the posts of both President and Prime Minister — a very unreasonable demand, given the fact that they just gained 220 seats out of 601 in the April 10 Constituent Assembly elections. Their rejection of the proposal by the second biggest party with 110 seats — the Nepali Congress — to make the India-born and four-time Prime Minister GP Koirala the first President of the country indicates the complexity of times ahead.

There is another big problem — that of rehabilitation of some 19,000 Maoist guerillas. Their weapons are currently locked up and kept under UN supervision, but they are keeping the keys in their hands. They want to be absorbed in the army and seem set to spark off fresh prairie fire if things do not go their way. They are far from practising democrats and believe in revolution, not evolution. Democracy may not appeal to them for long with its checks and balances, which at times are quite frustrating.

There is thus a looming shadow of doubt over the course democracy will meander in Nepal with the Maoists showing no signs of flexibility and accommodativeness. Their intransigence has stalled government formation so far, and every day differences seem to be only widening.

The Constituent Assembly is otherwise all-inclusive and democratically attuned. It has a representative of even a tiny group like the Mecches, who are a dwindling Bodo tribe inhabiting the southern montane slopes of Nepal. Thus, there is no doubt about the objectives of pursuing democratic principles if only the Maoists would learn to tolerate others and not convert democracy into a farce of electoral rigmarole the outcome of which they will predetermine.

The writer, a former Director General of Police in Kerala and Director General of the National Security Guard and the Border Security Force, is currently the State Chief Information Commissioner, Assam)