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.