A great tragedy

By Murkot Ramunny

A great tragedy has befallen Nepal. Rarely in history have tragedies occurred in such circumstances. We have heard of the French and Russian revolutions and what happened in Burma (now Myanmar). But never has an exclusive palace quarrel resulted in such a tragedy.

As we await further developments, it would be interesting to go back to history when Prince Gyanendra was crowned King in the early 1950s by the Rana Prime Minister. In the pre-1950's, King Tribhuvan and even his earlier predecessors were more or less prisoners in their palaces. Ranas ruled the land. King Tribhuvan was the first to head a revolution for democracy against the autocratic rule of the Prime Minister.

In 1951, the King along with the two Queens, Crown Prince Mahendra and his sons, Birendra and Dhirendra, and Princess Ratna under the pretext of proceeding for a hunting trip, escaped into the Indian Embassy. The rest is history. The entire royal family was evacuated to India. After prolonged discussion with the emissaries of the Ranas, the King returned to transform himself to a constitutional monarch.

When the royal party left the palace, Prince Gyanendra was not in the group. Stories differ. The young boy was playing somewhere and couldn't be found, was one report. The other was that he was deliberately left behind as a possible heir to the throne if something happened to the entire royal family. When the royal family was flown to Delhi, which according to the Rana Prime Minister was, that he had given up the throne, Prince Gyanendra the toddler was crowned king.

Not long after, the monarch and his family returned and so did normality to Kathmandu.

Prince Gyanendra who grew up with a sense of humour used to say ``I was king before my father''. The wheels of fate have turned slowly. A quarter of a century later, Prince Gyanendra, according to reports, is likely to be crowned king.

From all accounts, it was the proposed marriage of the Crown Prince that has led to this disaster and that horoscope readers had also someway or other contributed.

King Birendra was an ideal constitutional monarch who, even as Crown Prince, was trained and brought up to become a constitutional monarch with people's welfare to be given foremost consideration. Those who knew him along with the world moan his loss and that of his family and pray that Nepal recovers from the shock and continues its march to prosperity.

(The writer is a former director of the Indian Cooperation Mission.)

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Section  : International
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