Nepalese Martyrs’ Day Celebratio

By KTM Reporter in Kathmandu

On January 24, 2008, a weeklong celebration of the Nepalese Martyrs’ Day was started garlanding the statue of Martyr Sukra Raj Shatri in Kathmandu. The weeklong celebration ends on the national martyrs’ Day on January 30, 2008.

The Rana despotic rulers hanged Sukra Raj Shatri and Dharma Bhakta Mathema, and shot dead Ganga Lal Shrestha and Dhasrath Chand for asking a little bit of human rights for Nepalese people. They spared Tanka Prasad Acharya and Ram Hari Sharma, as they were Brahmins. Ram Hari is still alive. Tanka Prasad died. A statue of Tanka Prasad was built at Koteswore, Kathmandu.

Nepalese people completed the movement started by these living and dead martyrs by ending the Rana regime in 1951. However, the end of the Rana rule did not make democracy flourish in Nepal, as the Shah rule continued oppressing the Nepalese people.

So, Nepalese people had to launch another movement in 1990 to get back the democracy lost to the despotic king Mahendra in 1960. At that time, too, many Nepalese people lost lives while peacefully asking for the return of democracy.

Again Nepalese people needed to fight for the return of democracy in 2006 to get back the democracy lost to another freak king called Gyanendra in 2001. Again, a number of Nepalese people lost lives during the movement in April 2006.

So, Nepal has a number of martyrs. Nepalese people need to preserve their identities ending the traces of the regimes they had fought to abolish, and flourishing democracy and republic.

Former royal regime has constructed a gate called Shahid (Martyrs’) Gate with the statues of the four first martyrs such as Sukra Raj Shatri, Dharma Bhakta Mathema, Ganga Lal Shrestha and Dhasrath Chand at four different corners and then one level above built the statue of former King Tribhuvan. This was an insult to the martyrs. So, the Government of Nepal needs to tear down the statue of Tribhuvan as a respect for the martyrs.

The government of Nepal has removed the portraits of kings and their crowns from the Nepalese bank notes, replaced the king’s anthem with the new democratic and people’s anthem, and erased all the royals from the names of the state-owned corporations and offices.