KATHMANDU, NEPAL, March 16, 2008: It was perhaps the last public act of a jaded 240-year-old monarchy. King Gyanendra had appeared at a temple to worship the Hindu God Siva. It was the kind of ritual that once had Nepalis in awe, but now the talking point from once reverential subjects was whether or not their monarch would be stoned. The king strode through a crowd where only last year protesters had stoned his motorcade. He waved, police charged the crowd with batons and he escaped to his car, safe from any flying objects but not from a wave of anti-royalist feelings. “He was God, but due to his actions he has turned into a ghost,” said Ram Prasad Neupane, a 30 year-old Hindu priest outside Pashupatinath temple, where smoke and ash from the wooden pyres of cremated Nepalis hung in the night air.
Traditionally regarded as a reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, King Gyanendra’s days are numbered as Nepal prepares for April constituent assembly elections that will almost certainly abolish the monarchy, sealing a peace deal that ended a decade-long Maoist insurgency. Now confined to his last remaining palace, the 61-year-old king’s downfall highlights Nepal’s changes as it loses its status as the world’s last Hindu state.
Nepalis are embracing political modernity. Maoist former rebels are in parliament. Major parties have promised a republic, seen as heresy only a few years ago. Mobile phone billboards have sprung up around a capital enjoying a building boom.
Many Nepalis in one of the world’s poorest nations feel ambivalent about ending their monarchy, and some even warn of a political backlash by royalist forces unhappy at the looming end of the world’s last Hindu nation.
“The institution of the monarchy is still very important in the rituals of ordinary people.” said Sudhindra Sharma, director of Interdisciplinary Analysts, a respected polling company. “There is lots of room for a backlash in Nepal.”
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