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Pervasive Celebration Of Anniversary Of Prithvi Shah
Pervasive Celebration Of Anniversary Of Prithvi Shah
Siddhi B Ranjitkar
The Nepal Academy took the responsibility for marking the 293rd birth anniversary of the cruelest eccentric and irrational man called Prithvi Shah that had been born to subjugate the Nepalese for 240 years. Nepalese remained poor and destitute for two and a half centuries because of him and his successors. The average lifespan of Nepalese did not exceed 30 years during the period of that tyrannical rule. Nepalese continued to live in poverty even today as the hangover from the Shah-Rana rule. Nepalese youths had had to go to the Middle East, South East Asian Countries and elsewhere in the world where they were welcomed to work to escape from the poverty inherited from the Shah-Rana rulers. That had been the injustice done to the people; the so-called academicians of the Nepal Academy were ignorant of it.
The Nepal Academy feeding on the hard-earned resources of the Nepalese had been actively spending money on celebrating and glorifying the injustice done by Prithvi and his descendants. What right the Nepal Academy had to take the large portrait of the man that had set up the reign of terror and kept the entire Nepalese in destitute for the period of the Shah-Rana rule. The Nepal Academy had no right to do so unless it wanted to revive the rule of injustice some of the politicians with the injustice running in their blood wanted to put back such a rule. In fact, the rule of injustice had been gradually flourishing even after destroying the root of the injustice abolishing the monarchy forever in 2008.
The day of the birth of such a man called Prithvi Shah certainly should be marked but not glorifying his deeds but as the reminder of his misdeeds and injustice done to Nepalese. That day was certainly a black day in the history of Nepal.
If the Nepal Academy had any gut to understand what Shah rulers had done even during our lifetime those poor guys in the Nepal Academy certainly being literate of how many beautiful Nepalese lives had been sacrificed just to have the rights to live as humans would not dare to mark the day of such rulers. Those academicians happy to glorify the monster of injustice would come to sense and would never dare to do so again.
Just to remind those academicians terribly ignoring the recent events of injustice done to Nepalese had marked the 293rd day of Prithvi Shah on January 11, 2016 that Mahendra Shah as recently as in 1960 had killed democracy, and killed many political leaders, and a cadre of political parties such as Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal, and even put Ganeshman Singh and BP Koirala behind bars for seven years, and many other political leaders, too for several years. The academicians would not have done so what they did to mark the day of Prithvi if they were to know the recent history of the Shah rule.
Mahendra put the clock back for thirty years setting up the no-party system called panchayat, and Nepalese had to live at the mercy of the Shah rulers and their sycophants during the panchayat period. Certainly, the panchayat regime was better than the Rana regime but it was the worse regime for anybody to live like humans. Every resource went to for the pleasures of the Shah rulers and their counselors. Nobody knew when his/her land would be expropriated for building the palaces for the young princes and princesses. Many Nepalese lost their livelihood after the panchayat government took their land for building the resorts or palaces for the Shah dynastic rulers.
I knew that Birendra as a king set up his winter camp in Surkhet every year for the pleasure flight to mountains and hills on the pretext of inaugurating the water taps, school buildings, village panchayat buildings and so on. He flew on the Nepal Army helicopters everyday for hours. He had his camp illuminated by the electric lamps from the power temporarily connected with the Nepalgunj power grid. The engineer and his boss must have made millions from the commission they received from purchasing the electrical transformers and other appliances, wires, poles and installing them temporarily for the pleasure and comfort of Birendra and his spouse. The army took the green vegetables from Kathmandu on a helicopter to Surkhet at the hint of Birendra and his spouse desired for.
Birendra was simply following the tradition set by his father Mahendra. However, Mahendra did not go so far. His activities were limited to Pokhara, Bharatpur and Chitwan. He had his bungalows in those areas. Surely, Birendra was smarter than his father and he enjoyed life better than his father did. His father Mahendra had just come out of the poverty the Rana prime ministers had inflicted on Tribhuvan: father of Mahendra. The Rana prime ministers even denied regular schooling to Mahendra and his siblings. Tribhuvan spent almost all his life as a prisoner of the Rana prime minister without having the regular education and cultural activities.
So, Mahendra made a lot of money for himself and for his future generations putting the entire Nepalese in poverty. He grabbed everything possible without attracting the public eyes. The word on the street had it that Vishnumani Acharya was the zonal commissioner that made his office as an agent to collect money from the traders and businessmen for the palace. Thus, the Shah ruler gradually came out of the poverty keeping the entire Nepalese in poverty.
Going back to Birendra’s winter camp in Surkhet, he had immensely enjoyed the life as any monarch could dream of. All the engineer, doctors, administrative officials down to the camp keepers and sweepers received medals for rendering services to his camp. Anybody could guess how much national resources had been squandered for the pleasure of Birendra and his spouse.
The academicians working at the Nepal Academy were aware of all these things, and surely aware of the blood spilled by youths to end the autocratic rule of the Ranas in 1951, then to tear down the panchayat regime in 1990, and finally to abolish the Shah dynastic rule in 2008. Nepalese had to finish off first the Rana dynastic rule then the panchayat monopoly rule, and then the Shah dynastic rule whereas most of the nations had to do away with only one dynastic ruler.
Nepalese had effectively shed the burden of carrying the autocratic rulers as the yoked on their necks in 2008. However, the academicians working at the Nepal Academy had in their blood the remnants of the injustice inflicted by those Shah-Rana-panchayat rulers on the Nepalese people. It would take some time for them to shed the nasty blood flowing in their veins and arteries.
Now, coming to the politicians that had been shouldering the Shah-panchayat rulers. Those former Panchayat politicians called panchas at that time had been facing formidable challenges from the democratic and leftwing forces prevailing now. Almost all of the former pancha politicians had been political deadwoods. So, whenever they had a chance of coming back to the public light they did not missed it. That was why they were so enthusiastic to mark the day of injustice in the name of Prithvi Shah to be on the public eyes at least once a year.
Among those former Panchas, Kamal Thapa came out to be the smartest one. He was currently holding the portfolio of foreign affairs as the deputy prime minister. He had been enjoying the unprecedented power in his political life. He was one of the six deputy prime ministers Oli had appointed to.
Kamal Thapa had been a monarchist, and a Hindu-state advocate. He had asked a sizable amount of money from the Gyanendra Shah for the elections to the second constituent assembly but the stingy Shah did not give him as much as he had asked for, according to the local media. What Kamal Thapa did was then he placed his agenda on the revival of the monarch on the back burner, and he made his main agenda of making Nepal a Hindu State in the election campaign. Thapa knew that Nepalese would not vote for the monarchy but he garnered sufficient votes for the Hindu State to make him a credible partner in the governance.
Thapa was a smart guy. He demonstrated smartness again after the adoption of the new constitution joining the Oli government. He knew that he could not go on fighting for the Hindu state indefinitely not to mention the monarchy. He would not have enough resources to do so without drawing resources from the Indian Hindu fundamentalists. That meant creating dependency on them and it also would be antinational and self-destructive clearly demonstrated by the current Madheshi movement depending on Indian Prime Minister Modi. So, the best alternative for Thapa had been to accept the office of the deputy prime minister following the constitution of Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal.
For Prachanda and Oli, too, Kamal Thapa’s inclusion in the cabinet had been a great achievement. The man that had been against the federalism, and against the republican setup, and that had been for the monarchy and the Hindu State had joined the government quietly accepting the constitution. One of the greatest political headaches had gone for Prachanda and Oli. That was one of the major political achievements of these two political guys, too.
Kamal Thapa knew that the monarchy had been dead. He was not for carrying the dead corpse forever on his shoulder. He also knew that reviving the dead monarchy had been next to impossible. So, Kamal Thapa had taken a new political course so that he could maintain his presence in the political mainstream. Thapa had shown such political maturity that none of his Pancha colleagues that had been senior to him could surpass him. Thapa would do the best staying on course.
Kamal Thapa was bowing to the portrait of Prithvi Shah placed on the map showing the territories lost to the British Raj in India. The greater Nepal was not what Prithvi had created; Thapa knew it. Pritihvi’s Nepal was much smaller. So, the politicians giving credit to Prithvi for saving Nepal from the British Raj were totally wrong. They were simply apple-polishers. They needed to read the Nepalese history to understand the political map of Nepal.
The academicians so pompously marking the anniversary of the Prithvi saying he was the unifier and he was the symbol of unification should try to figure out how many times Nepal had been unified in the past. Those academicians I mean the members of the Nepal Academy had been totally unaware of the Nepalese history and they had been apple-polishers, or possibly their ancestors had the opportunity of licking the boots of the Shah eccentric rulers in the past. Those academicians must have the taste of what their ancestors had licked.
Those academicians had even failed to read the Nepalese national flag. If they had read the flag they would know that the flag was the symbol of unification. For the information of the ignorant academicians, the flag has the moon at the top and the sun on the bottom. The Licchavi monarch belonging to the lunar dynasty merged with another Licchavi belonging to the solar dynasty making a greater Nepal. If they were for marking a real unification day then they should mark the day of creating the current national flag of Nepal not of the anniversary of the man that had been nothing but the symbol of injustice and cruelty, and the perpetual poverty of Nepalese in general. The Licchavi Nepal disintegrated and political instability prevailed for four hundred years from 800 AD to 1200 AD. The Malla king put the principalities back into a larger Nepal. Did the members of the Nepal Academy know these political events? Obviously not otherwise they would not give the whole credit to Prithvi for the unification of Nepal.
Patriotic Nepalese had brought the map of the greater Nepal of today to the common notice neither by the apple-polishers nor by the Kamal Thapa. Patriotic Nepalese had the chance of making it public after Nepal became a republic. Previous governments had banned publishing the map of the greater Nepal and broadcasting the detailed history of the greater Nepal, and how the territories had been lost to the British India; how the treaties with the British rulers in India had the provisions for getting back the lost territory peacefully following the legal provisions.
Some media reporters wrote that the British had offered the then Rana dynastic ruler the Nepalese territory back to Nepal when they were leaving India in 1947 but the then Rana prime minister refused to accept the offer fearing that he might even lose the crown he had been wearing. The then Rana prime minister did not realized that he had only a few more years to stay on in office.
So, coming back to Kamal Thapa and marking the anniversary of Prithvi, Thapa must be pretending to bow to the portrait of Prithvi. Actually, he was securing the political identity. He could not be a democratic not to mention a communist. He could not be a monarchist, too, as voters would boycott him and his party. The only way for him to keep his political life alive was to be a patriot and nationalist.
The Indian unofficial blockade on the Nepalese frontiers in support of the Madheshi movement had been a blessing in disguise for Kamal Thapa. He had the opportunity of talking to his Indian counterpart on a par with her official status. He had even had a chance of having a handshake with the Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi. Kamal Thapa must be very proud of being the first Foreign Minister of Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. Is it not incredible? Certainly it is, as the diehard monarchist and the Hindu revivalist had turned into a republican.
Marking the anniversary of Prithvi as the unity day would not keep the country in one piece if the rulers were not willing to share the power with all the people in other words all Nepalese should have equal rights otherwise political instability would continue and the neighbors would have a chance of playing a dubious role in the Nepalese politics.
Breaching the constitution, none of the rulers could run the country smoothly. Prime Minister Oli bluntly violated the constitution making his cabinet of 40 ministers whereas the constitution allowed only 25 cabinet ministers including the prime minister. In response to the Supreme Court’s query concerning the appointment of ministers flouting the constitutional provision, Oli had replied to the Supreme Court of Nepal that it was the transitional period and the government had appointed the ministers following the necessity and it was the executive authority to do so, according to the news in ‘gorkhapatra’ of January 13, 2016. What a reply, Mr. Oli needed to be accountable to the constitution as the top law enforcement official. Who would follow the constitution if Oli were to breach it?
Oli needed to immediately fire the chief of the Nepal Academy for marking the anniversary of Prithvi on January 11, 2016 going against the government’s decision not to mark such a day. Those irrational and bankrupt literary figures should be punished for flouting the government rules and regulations if the country to be kept in one piece. The Nepal Academy had provoked the wrath of the people that had suffered from the Shah-Rana dynastic rule for 240 years. Defying the government’s stand on not marking the anniversary of Prithvi, those so-called academicians had been contributing to the political instability provoking the Nepalese in general to rise against the unequal treatment of the people by marking the anniversay.
January 13, 2016
