{"id":6794,"date":"2008-05-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/05\/06\/nepal-s-living-goddess-tradition-in-peril\/"},"modified":"2008-05-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-06T12:00:00","slug":"nepal-s-living-goddess-tradition-in-peril","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/05\/06\/nepal-s-living-goddess-tradition-in-peril\/","title":{"rendered":"Nepal&#8217;s Living Goddess Tradition in Peril"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/sify.com\/news\/fullstory.php?id=14665276\">sify.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">KATHMANDU, NEPAL, May 2, 2008: Nepal&#8217;s newly elected constituent assembly will hold its first meeting next month and officially begin the process of abolishing the Hindu king&#8217;s 239-year-old crown and turning him into a commoner. &#8220;The people have mandated us to transform Nepal into a federal democratic republic and end the feudal monarchical system,&#8221; Maoist lawmaker and winner of constituent assembly election Janardan Sharma told IANS. &#8220;All institutions associated with the royal family and feudalism will have to be changed. The Kumari is not an essential institution for the new Nepal,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Two years ago, when the king&#8217;s bid to seize absolute power with the help of the army failed, a national uprising led by the Maoists forced the monarch to step down. The new government subsequently declared Nepal, the world&#8217;s only Hindu kingdom, a secular nation. However, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who succeeded the king, kept up the state attendance at Hindu festivals, triggering much criticism. With Nepal&#8217;s Maoists having begun an inexorable countdown for the ouster of the once all-powerful King Gyanendra, the fate of one of the oldest religious institutions of the nation &#8211; the Kumaris or &#8220;living Goddesses&#8221; &#8211; also lies in jeopardy.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>sify.com KATHMANDU, NEPAL, May 2, 2008: Nepal&#8217;s newly elected constituent assembly will hold its first meeting next month and officially,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}