Royal riots! Till kingdom come?

Nepal is on a royal boil. The Himalayan country has had 13 unlucky governments in its 16 years of republican life. No wonder, many citizens are saying, damn the democrats, call back the king.

 

That’s much like how England was in the 17th century when the country had its brief fling with republicanism. In six years the people got so fed up with their parliamentary protectors that they called back the king in 1660. They have never since regretted, though the restored king, son of the deposed and beheaded Charles I, spent more of his waking hours with whores in bed than with lords in the court.

 

Constitutional monarchy has since struck such deep roots in England’s functional democracy that Egypt’s last king Farouk once predicted that England’s would be the only king who would survive into the 21st century along with the kings of Clubs, Spades, Hearts and Diamonds. Indeed, monarchs have survived in a few other European courts, but none as deeply institutionalised as England’s.

 

Now it’s the turn of Nepal’s old King Gyanendra to nurse Restoration dreams. Sixteen years of electoral democracy has thrown Nepal into political and administrative chaos. Every election is leading to wafer-thin-majority regimes or hung parliaments; governance has turned into a bargain over spoils and loot.

 

So much so, many republicans have come to root for royal order, some Maoists for monarchy, and many communists for kingship. No joke. Kamal Thapa’s Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal (RPPN) was the main champion of royalist restoration all these years, but leading the pack now is Durga Prasai, who had started his adult life as a Maoist guerilla, turned into a businessman, evolved as a political match-maker, and is now leading the riots for the royalist cause. Last heard, the old ungodly commie is hiding in a temple to evade arrest after driving his car though police barricades.

 

The demand is for a constitutional monarchy, much like England’s, that would have an elected parliament and a cabinet to advise the king, but Gyanendra is on a royal ride. His landing in Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport from Pokhara three weeks ago was much like Charles II’s landing in Dover from his Dutch exile in 1660. Tens of thousands of his ex-subjects crowded the airport and escorted him into the city.

 

Nepal isn’t new to kings leading people’s revolts. Gyanendra’s grandfather Tribhuvan had led a popular revolt against the misrule of the hereditary Rana prime ministers in 1950, an event that is still counted as one of the few instances in world history where a king led his people against tyranny and misrule.

 

Gyanendra is game. He had been crowned twice as king of Nepal, but both his reigns had been short-lived. Twice? Yes, when Tribhuvan sought refuge in India to escape the clutches of the persecuting Ranas in 1950, the latter had dethroned him and crowned the three-year-old Gyanendra as king! So if he makes it to the throne again, that would be Gyanendra’s third coronation, the second having been after the massacre of his brother Birendra and family in 2002.

 

Republican realists say Gyanendra is day-dreaming. Nepal isn’t ripe for another revolution, royalist or republican. Its politics may be chaotic, but its economy grew four per cent last year. Paddy and power production have gone up, so have exports and imports, tourism is picking up, jobs are around though few, there’s no runaway inflation, no widespread misery.

 

Unless the royalists run riot and wreck it all. No wonder, die-hard republicans are asking for the ex-king’s arrest.

 

prasannan@theweek.in

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