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, 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”.
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 monarchy
“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 said.
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 said that most of the present generation have no idea of the lack of freedom under an absolutist ruler. Nagarik Daily Chief Editor, veteran journalist Guna Raj Luitel said 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,” said 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. Dahal told the House of Representatives that the Government’s incompetence had pushed people from all sectors and communities towards agitations even demanding a return to absolutism. 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 said 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.
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.
Chronic instability
A key reason for the harking back to Royalist days is the absence of stability in Nepal’s politics under democracy. Nepal has had 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 override 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.
