The tragedy in Nepal

THE MACABRE MASSACRE of King Birendra of Nepal and several other ranking scions of the royal order, including Queen Aishwarya, has left the constitutional monarchy of the poor Himalayan state in utter disarray. Compounding the ghoulish tragedy is the official ambivalence about a flurry of independent reports suggesting the involvement of Crown Prince Dipendra as the assailant. First, the prince was reported to have tried to kill himself with the weapon that he used to murder his popular parents and close relatives on Friday night. This version has since been disputed, with the palace and the Prime Minister, Mr. Girija Prasad Koirala, now claiming that the killings were the result of an ``accidental shooting''. Yet, the authorities have refrained from saying how or by whom the grisly ``accident'' had been caused. So, it seems to be a bizarre adherence to some interpretation of `constitutional' propriety that the State Council, which concerns itself with royal matters, should have named Prince Dipendra as the new King, despite the doubts over his alleged involvement in a treasonable crime. As the prince is said to be critically ill, perhaps even `clinically dead', the slain King's brother, Prince Gyanendra, has been assigned to perform the functions of the monarch. The first accounts of the gruesome conversion of a palace chamber into a killing field indicated that Prince Dipendra, the designated heir to the throne, had presumably killed his parents in a rage over their opposition to his choice of a bride from an aristocratic family.

The scale of the mass slaughter of the Nepalese royal brigade is widely seen to match the monarchical executions that Lenin ordered in Russia in the early part of last century. Even in the absence of clear evidence about the murder motives in Nepal at this time, the two are not politically comparable at all. There has also been no serious suggestion by official Nepal at this time that the so-called Maoist guerillas of the Himalayan kingdom might have had something to do with the slaying of King Birendra. Indeed, the assassinated monarch enjoyed an enormous degree of acceptability among the ordinary Nepalese citizens. A unique high point of his long reign was the people-friendly role that he played to facilitate Nepal's transformation into a constitutional monarchy with a democratic core in 1990. This was particularly significant in the context of his earlier penchant for not only a large dose of absolute monarchy but also the panchayat system of governance which could at best be regarded only as a half-way step towards modern democracy of a non- ideological kind. As the promulgations of the Panchayat Constitution in 1962 and the Royal Constitution in 1959 had preceded Birendra's reign, he rightly earned political colours as the patron of Nepalese democracy.

The latest carnage in Kathmandu might spark an unusually serious debate over republicanism in Nepal. Even before this palace mayhem, the present elected Government, headed by Mr. Koirala, had found itself in considerable political difficulties over several issues, including charges of corruption and a security challenge traceable to the growing influence of the Maoist People's War activists, who clamour for `social justice'. However, the Koirala administration will need to brace itself for possible new challenges in the context of a climate of confusion that could be caused by the king's passing. Nepal's internal political problems in the ongoing democratic era have often been heightened by deep ideological contentions over basic policy issues. Another complication is a peculiar siege-mentality of the Nepalese politicians who tend to worry about the overwhelming strategic presence of India and China in their immediate neighbourhood. While Kathmandu often appears keen to do a balancing act in its foreign policy in respect of New Delhi and Beijing, Nepal's internal agendas are not also devoid altogether of security issues of concern to its big neighbours. Yet, as the Koirala administration seeks to weather the current palace crisis, Nepal should be able to count on the goodwill of India and other neighbours.

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Section  : Opinion
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