Kathmandu: The Nepali capital, Kathmandu, witnessed a strange sight on Sunday: A grand welcome to its former king Gyanendra, who flew in from the western city of Pokhara after spending several weeks touring temples around the Himalayan nation. The grand reception by members of monarchist parties and groups has left many observers wondering: Are Nepalis preparing to lay a red carpet to its deposed king again?
Several Hindu monarchists may have likened the grand reception of Gyanendra to that of his grandfather late king Tribhuvan’s homecoming on 18 February, 1951 after a three-month-long exile in Delhi. Towards the end of that, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had facilitated a tripartite agreement between the Nepali King, Nepali Congress party and the Rana rulers, ending the 104-year Rana oligarchy (1846-1951) and introducing democracy in Nepal.
That day is observed as Democracy Day in Nepal.
Much water has flowed down Kathmandu since then. Several political upheavals, including a bloody Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006 that claimed the lives of around 17,000 people, have come and gone. The new 2015 constitution, promulgated despite Delhi’s strong reservations, turned Nepal into a kingless republic.
Yet the former monarch, overthrown by the first meeting of the constituent assembly on 28 May, 2008, took the opportunity to yet again issue his annual message to the nation - as if he were still a reigning monarch. On 18 February this year, he asserted that the "time has come" to "back him" so as to "steer the nation along the path of unity, peace and development".
Pro-Hindu monarchy parties like the Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) and RPP Nepal and pro-royalist groups were quick to heed it. Seizing the opportunity, thousands of their supporters descended on the Ring Road outside Kathmandu airport to cheer Gyanendra on, despite his past unpopularity that stemmed from his post-2002 autocratic moves. Those moves, analysts say, eventually led to the demise of the monarchy just a few years later.
Be that as it may, the big question is this: Can Nepalis accommodate Hindu monarchy within the republic, more than 16 years after it was officially deleted from Nepal’s constitution? Could blessings from pro-Hindu parties in Nepal and India, including Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, work in Nepali monarchists’ favour?
Having rejected such a possibility, Nepali politicians, including Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, are livid. They have suggested the former king to "fight elections" if he wishes to join politics.
"What has happened to the country [that he has to step in]?" Oli told the Sudurpaschim Province Assembly meeting, just as crowds swelled in Kathmandu on Sunday. "This kind of activity would invite instability; chaotic activities that are inspired by him are pushing the country to the brink."
Oli’s political opponents belonging to pro-monarchy forces reject that. Worse, they accuse him and other top leaders like Sher Bahadur Deuba of Nepali Congress, and Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda of CPN-Maoist Centre of being responsible for ills like growing corruption, crony capitalism, nepotism and continuing flights of Nepali youth for greener pastures abroad.
Rajendra Lingden, president of the RPP, seems determined to force politicians in the republican set-up to eventually agree on what the party calls a "new understanding" between all the political forces in order to reinstate "constitutional monarchy".
He warned this week: "If the ruling parties agree to work on the 'new understanding', that's fine. Or else public revolt will grow and succeed in reinstating constitutional monarchy."
Leaders of the major parties, who have helmed recent governments on a rotational basis, don't seem ready just yet. A leader of Nepali Congress, Krishna Prasad Sitaula who, in 2008 June, urged the deposed king Gyanendra to quietly vacate the palace, argued this week that "he doesn't have the muscle to return to the palace again".
Former Maoist rebel leader Baburam Bhattarai, who has publicly and repeatedly gone to the extent of accusing Gyanendra of being a suspect behind the 1 June, 2001 Narayanhiti palace massacre, rejects it too. He famously likened pro-monarchy shows of force to the "post-slaughter flickering of a goat’s tail".
The 2015 constitution of Nepal, however, has not made room for such a possibility, according to senior advocate Hari Upreti. "If the monarchy is to be returned, then we will need a new constitution, which would be possible only in the event of another big uprising seeking return of the monarchy," he said.
The groundswell of public support for monarchy witnessed this week could be "a result of the failure of the republic to deliver what had been promised before".
"Right now, I don’t see the possibility of pro-monarchy protests getting bigger than this," he added. Author Manjushree Thapa suspects foul play. "The scheme to return the monarchy to Nepal is part of a Hindu fundamentalist vision of an 'Akhanda Bharat', an undivided India with a Hindu monarch in Nepal," she wrote on Facebook.
"There’s a reason Uttar Pradesh’s Yogi Adityanath is supporting Gyanendra Shah." She continued: "This isn't a time to look backwards, folks. Nepal gave the constitutional monarchy a chance even after the royal family massacred most of its members in 2001. And what did Gyanendra Shah do? He turned Nepali citizens into subjects of an absolute [and very incompetent!] king. So. Look forward. The future can't be a re-tread of the past."
