Prithvinarayan Shah: the Nose Cutter

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

In 1742 when Prithvinarayn became the king of Gorkha he was only twelve-year old. At that time Gorkha was a tiny kingdom in comparison to the Nepal kingdom. The capital of Gorkha was only a small village on the top of a hill. Only small foot trails linked this capital of Gorkha. The total population of the Gorkha kingdom was only 8,000. However, killing the opponents and defeated people in a most barbaric way that humans could think of, Prithvinarayn successfully set up a kingdom of many times larger than the tiny kingdom he inherited.

Prithvinarayn was very skilled in taking the advantage of every situation he faced. He knew how to get work done from his staffs and colleagues, and honored their work done perfectly. He was also very skilled in getting work done as he wished for.

Prithvinarayn was as much a diplomat as a brutal ruler. He killed an officer at the guesthouse in Banaras (an ancient city of Bihar State of current India) where he did not receive the honor as much as he thought he deserved. Then he went on in hiding. The local authorities were looking for him for the crime of murdering an officer obviously for no felony of the murdered officer. In order to avoid the arrest and then certainly the punishment for killing an officer in whim, Prithvinarayn promised a great reward to an ascetic in return for his help in the safe exit of Prithvinarayn from the area. The ascetic took Prithvinarayn out of the hiding making him one of the ascetic’s disciples to Palpa: current town in western Nepal from where Prithvinarayn went back to his Gorkha safely. Thus, an ascetic saved Prithvinarayn from the most possible death penalty for killing an innocent officer in Banaras.

After Prithvinarayn became the king of Nepal, the ascetic with his disciples came to Prithvinarayn seeking the reward Prithvinarayn had promised him in return for his safe exit from Banaras. Prithvinarayn instead of providing the ascetic with an appropriate reward for his job done for safely taking him out of Banaras, Prithvinarayn ordered his soldiers to arrest the ascetic and his disciples and put them in custody and then threatened them to kill if they did not quietly go back to their home country.

Once Prithvinarayn had imposed an embargo on trade with Nepal in view of cutting off supply of essential goods to Nepal from his kingdom. One villager attempted to smuggle cotton and salt out of the Gorkha Kingdom to Nepal. Knowing this incident, Prithvinarayn ordered to kill all the villagers thus punishing the entire population of a village for the felony of one villager.

Prithvinarayn had lost a number of wars he had waged against Kirtipurians at several times. At one of the wars he had waged with the Kirtipurians, he would have surely lost his life if the Kirtipurian soldiers had not followed the ethic of not killing the king. One of his brothers was killed but Prithvinarayn was saved by the ethics of the Kirtipurian soldiers, as they believed that it was not the ethic of an ordinary soldier to kill a king.

However, Prithvinarayn did not stop from attacking Kirtipur again and again until he won it. Ultimately, he captured the Kirtipur kingdom. Defenders of Kirtipur went on in hiding. Prithvinarayn announced that he would grant amnesty to all of them. Following the Prithvinarayn’s amnesty declaration, they came out of hiding but Prithvinarayn instead of amnesty, captured all of them and cut their noses and lips, collected all those cut noses and lips to count the number of people went on in hiding. Then, he renamed Kirtipur as Naskatpur means the nose-cutting town. Thus, the most unprincipled king Prithvinarayn succeeded to have the victory over the people who followed the ethics of war saved his life but became the victims of his cruelty.

Immediately after the victory over Kirtipur, Prithvinarayn invaded Patan and ordered the royalties to surrender to him otherwise they would face the destiny of Kirtipurians, and assured them of safe keeping of their lives and property if they surrendered to him. All of them following the assurances of Prithvinarayn surrendered to him. After some time, Prithvinarayn asked all of them to attend one of the festivals and then arrested them, and killed them ruthlessly. Thus, Prithvinarayn demonstrated that he would not tolerate even the potential opponents, and eliminated every possible opposition to his rule.

Prithvinarayn assured the seven sons born of concubines of King Ranajit Malla of Bhaktapur of dividing the revenue of their kingdom among the seven brothers and took them on his side before attacking the Bhaktapur kingdom. So, it did not take long time for him to take the Bhaktapur kingdom and force his adopted father King Ranajit Malla to go to Kashi (ancient religious Hindu town in the Bihar State of current India) for living there for the rest of his life. After his goal was achieved, he charged the seven sons of Ranajit Malla with treason, cut their noses and expropriated their property.

Such a merciless King Prithvinarayn finally died on the bank called Mohantirtha of the Gandaki River in 1775. Since Prithvinarayn set up a Nepal kingdom, Nepalis had lived under the repression of the merciless and sometimes insane Shah kings for 240 years in the absolute poverty as the then rulers expropriated most of the earnings of the people. Nepalis did not have even rights to speak in their mother tongues, if they spoke in the mother tongue they were punished. The Shah kings and their circle of the royalties took all the agricultural produces from the farmers and left them high and dry for two and a half centuries of their reign.

One of the historians Francis Buchanan Hamiltan wrote that Prithvinarayn attacked his brother-in-law Digbandan and took him and his family members prisoners in 1761, and barbarously killed some of them for resisting his assault on them, and sent their children to work with shoemakers.

In 2006 Nepalese people rose against the despotic and tyrannical dynastic ruler and did away with the Shah regime forever, and stopped all sorts of anniversaries celebrated in the names of the Shah rulers. However, a group of so-called intellectuals headed by Modhnath Preshit visited the Prime Minister at his Baluwatar residence on December 25, 2009 and urged him to celebrate the anniversary of the most malicious King Prithvinarayn in the name of a unity day on January 11, 2010. Certainly, these so-called intellectuals guys have been thriving on the resources looted from the people by the descendents of Prithvinarayn and have dared to serve their masters ignoring the sufferings of the Nepalis during the Shah dynastic rule. So, they are for reinstating the celebration of the anniversary of Prithvinarayn: the nose cutter.

Since last year, current Prime Minister Madhav Nepal and his political colleague Modhnath Preshit have been advocating for reinstating the tradition of celebrating the unity day in the name of Prithvinarayn, and have been glorifying Prithvinarayn as the King of uniting small kingdoms into a larger kingdom ignoring sufferings of millions of Nepalis during the tyrannical and despotic rule of the Shah kings. They also claim that Prithvinarayn has united all the people of different languages, religions and caste ignoring he did it at the gun point and his descendents had kept the unity at the gun point for 240 years. These few people flourishing in the resources looted by Shah dynastic rulers would certainly reinstate the celebration of the anniversary of the most merciless king. So, all Nepalis suffered from the whimsical rule of the Shah descendants need to rise again against the flunkies of the discredited Shah royals, and stopped them from glorifying the king infamous for his cruelty.

December 29, 2009

Note: This write-up is based on the Nepalese history written by French Scholar Sylvain Levi.