A society on test

The massacre has shaken the very foundations of the Nepali belief system. However, the Constitution of the kingdom appears to have passed the most severe test in its history.

WHO would have imagined that a dutiful son, and the Crown Prince of the only Hindu kingdom in the world at that, would mow down his entire family in a fit of madness? On that fateful night of June 1, 2001, time froze as that impossibility became a reality. History then ran on steroids as Nepal passed through the reign of three kings in four days, with one of them spending his reign in a coma. The entire nuclear family of King Birendra was wiped out in the shoot-out inside the maximum-security Narayanhiti Palace, which is guarded by 5,000 elite troops of the Royal Nepal Army. Apparently, guards are of no use before the fury of history.

Even though the massacre was entirely a family affair, it shook the very foundation of the Hindu belief system in which the son is supposed to be an agent for the salvation, and not elimination, of his parents. It is because of this that Nepalis do not want to believe that their former Crown Prince shot his parents, siblings, and several other members of the royal family. Believing the reality of regicide would imply the acceptance of the death of middle-class values. The tragedy has induced a mixture of emotions - disbelief, shock, grief, fear and anxiety. For people in such a frame of mind, no explanation looks plausible.

The report of the high-level investigation commission, eyewitness accounts of three surviving royals, and indications that the Crown Prince was a drug addict, all appeared as if they were manufactured to hide rather than expose the truth. These days Nepalis look at every reality expecting to discover a deception behind it. Taking resort to the conspiracy theory in order to run away from the harsh reality is an indication of the suspicious mind of an insecure urban population. It will be quite a while before Nepal comes to terms with a catastrophe that has been officially described using a string of adjectives, such as unimaginable, inconceivable, unexpected and improbable. But it is a tribute to the resilience of the oldest nation-state in South Asia that even a tragedy of this magnitude has been endured with relative composure. As people grieve with tonsured heads, life is limping back to normalcy. Contrary to what parachute journalists said on the small screen, Nepal is neither a nation on the verge of collapse nor a society in the process of disintegration. If anything, Nepalis appear to have come out of the trauma more resolute in their determination to preserve their independent identity, proving what Fredrich Nietzsche said, "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger."

The doubts created about the stability of Nepal in the minds of outsiders have entirely been the handiwork of mediapersons hunting for scoops. It was for the first time after the coronation of King Birendra back in 1974 that Nepal received saturation coverage in the international media. Led by newcomer-reporters of Indian satellite channels, journalists went for the exotic and allowed the reality to recede into the background.

It did not help matters much that what actually happened was more bizarre than anything that even the most fertile mind of a racy gossip columnist could concoct. A god-king at a weekend family soiree, a queen with a mind of her own, a lovelorn Crown Prince who was a drug-addict and a mimic Rambo shooting cats and crows for fun, a prince turned commoner who longed for his lost title, another prince barely out of his teens more comfortable on the dance floor than in the royal sitting room, and a fairytale painter-princess with an adoring husband and two baby girls among several other minor royals falling to rapid gunfire inside the high walls of the palace. This is the stuff not just of a Greek tragedy, but of human emotions on the same scale as the Mahabharata.

But there ends the similarity. The Greeks had their bards who embellished drab stories of court intrigues into timeless tales of love and hate. Dhritrastra, the blind king of the Kurus in the Mahabharata, had a factual reporter in Sanjaya and a riveting scribe in Vyasa. But when tragedy struck Nepal, instead of keeping watch, the Nepali media were seen snoring on its comfortable perches on the machaan. The field was left clear for interlopers to break the story of blood and gore over cable channels and on the Internet. It was only when the Indian government urged the advance soldiers in the media to hold fire that the reporting got a bit sober. Until then it was almost an Indian 'media intervention' in the internal affairs of a sovereign neighbouring country.

The investigation commission has more or less confirmed that the impetus for the shooting was a love affair between Crown Prince Dipendra and Devyani. Apparently there was a flurry of phone calls between the lovers just before the massacre. What gives a twist to the tale of the fatal love affair is the fact that Devyani is the younger daughter of Pashupati Shamsher and Usha Raje. That makes her the niece of Madhavrao Scindia, Maharaja of Gwalior and an influential Congress(I) politician. With such connections, it is not at all strange that Devyani is perceived in Nepal as more than a femme fatale. (A web site that portrayed her as an agent of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), got wide publicity in Kathmandu.)

The palace establishment's obsession with secrecy and security made matters worse. It refused to divulge the details of the shoot-out, and even Prime Minister G.P. Koirala holding the charge of the Ministry of Royal Affairs, was informed of the tragedy only two hours after the event. The Nepali media were kept in the dark while the international press had a field day culling juicy bits from bazaar gossip and wiring them back home as investigative journalism. This sullied the atmosphere so much that the government deemed it fit to ask cable service providers in Kathmandu to put certain Indian channels off the air.

The saving grace, if it can be called that, was that the shoot-out happened inside the palace and no commoner was involved. Had it been otherwise, conspiracy theorists would have intensified the simmering discontent. As it is, the Maoists, leading an insurgency in the hills of Nepal, had tried to identify themselves with the slain king and claimed to have had a 'working unity' with him. They would not have easily let go of an opportunity to fish in the muddy waters if they could somehow establish a connection between the shoot-out and a lay person.

By taking such a position, the Maoists were perhaps trying to cash in on the popularity of Birendra and sully the reputation of King Gyanendra. Better sense seems to have prevailed in Nepali society as the Maoist propaganda does not seem to have had the desired effect. People do not want to cause any more instability at this moment. Even the severest critics of King Gyanendra, the leadership of the Peoples' Movement of 1990 that was instrumental in the return of parliamentary democracy after 30 years, are willing to give the new King the benefit of the doubt and a chance to prove himself as a constitutional monarch.

Initial reluctance among a section of urban Nepalis to accept King Gyanendra as their new monarch was caused by his image. In complete contrast to his ever-smiling elder brother King Birendra, King Gyanendra was seldom seen in public without his trademark scowl. Added to that was his varied interests in business in a country where royals are treated like gods and are expected to behave like gods, by keeping their distance from the mundane pursuit of mammon. Like all business tycoons, Gyanendra had the image of an arch conservative. No matter that the people in the know knew of his passion for nature conservation and admired his no-nonsense, business-like approach, image is the most important factor in establishing the credibility of a person who, along with his son Paras Shah, are the only male survivors of the ruling family.

It is only after the international television crew departs that Nepal will be left to itself to cope with the trauma. The question now on everyone's mind is: what next?

The institution of monarchy has always been looked at as a stabilising force in an atmosphere of political turmoil, inevitable in a society engaged in the process of socio-political modernisation. By this tragedy, that certainty has ended. It is almost as if faith died when an incarnation of Vishnu was shot at. However, it is a measure of strength of a ruling family of nearly 300 years that the succession was as orderly as could be in the tense aftermath of the massacre.

King Gyanendra rose to the occasion when he pledged allegiance to the concept of constitutional monarchy in his first address to the nation after ascending the gilded throne in the historic Nasal Chowk of Hanuman Dhoka Durbar in the heart of Kathmandu. The challenge for him now is to live up to that promise and prove the doubters wrong. An assertive monarchy at this stage can prove to be disastrous not only for the institution of kingship but for the very existence of the Nepali nation-state. Paras Shah has a history of drunkenness and reckless driving. Considering that the young prince is the sole heir to the throne the royal family and its establishment will, under the circumstances, need to be extra-careful in checking his proclivity to waywardness.

The Nepali Congress, the ruling party and the oldest political organisation in the country, is a pale shadow of its former self. Beset with faction fights, bereft of visionary leadership and plagued by indiscipline at every level, the Nepali Congress has lost all credibility. Koirala has not been able to gain the acceptance of a very vocal section of his own party even though he became its chairman a year ago with an overwhelming majority. The winter session of Parliament had ended without a single formal sitting because the Opposition boycotted it demanding Koirala's resignation. The regicide was an unfortunate political respite of sorts for the embattled Prime Minister, but there is no gainsaying what awaits him in the monsoon session. It will be a budget session, and Koirala is sure to have a hard time having his way.

The Communist Party of Nepal (UML) is led by a clutch of leaders who have not grown out of their agitating mindset. Prone to populism and grandstanding, the CPN (UML) is having difficulty in realising its potential of becoming a force in mainstream politics. Madhav Nepal, its secretary-general and the leader of the Opposition in Pratinidhi Sabha, the Lower House of Parliament, first agreed to be on the high-level investigation commission formed by King Gyanendra to investigate the Narayanhiti massacre and then backed out. Although Madhav Nepal cited personal reasons for his resignation, it was said that his party objected to a commission formed by a royal proclamation. He could have still stayed on in the commission by making his reservation public, but he opted out and lost an opportunity to show political solidarity at a time of grave national crisis. In the words of a respected historian, "When history called, Comrade Nepal didn't respond." But despite this flip-flop, CPN(UML) cadres conducted themselves admirably and did their best to cool passions in the tense days. The tragedy seems to have made the CPN(UML) wiser, but its leaders need to be more mature if the party is to emerge as the principal political force in the country.

Th Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) is an organisation of former Panchas (political workers of the decades when the King was in absolute control) and its Chairman, Surya Bahadur Thapa, once had a public feud with Gyanendra, whom he described as an "underground and extra-constitutional force" in Nepali politics. Fortunately, Thapa was one of the first to welcome a smooth transition. The Nepal Sadbhavana Party claims to represent the interests of the Madhesi community and is seen by the jingoists of Kathmandu to be 'soft' towards India. But it too went with the mainstream political forces and accepted the harsh realities of Nepali politics with resignation. Barring the Maoists, politicians of every hue seem to have come to terms with the effects of the tragedy and can be counted upon to be the forces of stabilisation in the near future. Even the Maoists are giving indications of having second thoughts about the relevance of their armed insurgency, which has not done anything more than taking the lives of thousands of innocent people over the last six years. The statement of Prachanda, the Maoist leader, was full of revolutionary rhetoric but its operative part showed his yearning to return to mainstream politics in this hour of crisis. Now it is for the government to pick up that thread and build peace.

The administration and the public security apparatus did not collapse in the wake of the tragedy, as was feared. Deeply politicised and highly demoralised, the Nepali administration had lost all respectability, but it functioned even though barely so. There is reason to hope that a responsible political leadership can revive it. The Nepali police, once said to have been the most efficient in South Asia, is in a sorry state after having borne the brunt of the Maoist insurgency almost all by itself. That has somehow brutalised the force. Reports of policemen charging at protesters in early June may have been a result of the fear that had gripped the city, but by and large the force maintained discipline.

But the most admirable was the conduct of the common folk. True, there were tyre-burning youth in the streets of Kathmandu, but they were in a minority. Most people in the hills, valleys and plains of rural Nepal endured the tragedy with a sombre equanimity as they went about their daily chores. They did not make it to the television screens and front-pages of colourful broadsheets with a tabloid mentality, but they are the people who determine the fate of the country.

Slogan-shouting crowds consisting of people with shaven heads paying their obeisance to photographs of the departed royalty or women wiping tears at street corners captured by the camera of the press showed that section of Nepal which knew the King in person. Their number was indeed large as the royalty had become popular after the King agreed to become a constitutional monarch in 1990, yet they constitute a very small proportion of the population. For the people in the countryside, a King never dies; he simply leaves for his heavenly abode.

Tradition has it that the throne is never empty. In fact, when Crown Prince Dipendra was in hospital, there was talk of placing the footwear of the late King on the throne and the regent ruling in the manner of Bharata who ran the Raghubanshi empire of Ayodhya after 'enthroning' the footwear of Ram. Better sense prevailed, and a more practical approach was adopted by declaring Dipendra the King with Gyanendra as the regent.

For people outside Nepal, not steeped in the tradition of royal houses, it must have appeared a little strange that Nepalis accepted a 'brain-dead alleged killer' as their King. But try telling that to a Nepali for whom the king is a symbol of divinity beyond the realm of temporal laws. Cultural beliefs do not work according to rational logic; you have to be steeped in the value system to appreciate its nuances. The night the high-level commission made its report public, monsoon rain lashed the country. For the agrarian society of Nepal clouds are harbingers of hope and the rains bring good fortune despite occasional floods and landslips.

The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1990, has passed a severe test as its provisions endured an event unprecedented in political history. In the days to come, it is likely that the Constitution will emerge as an even more powerful unifying factor for this diverse nation than the institution of monarchy. If that happens - and there is no reason to doubt that it will not - it will be the triumph of hope over desperation, and victory of faith over fatalism.

C.K. Lal is a Kathmandu-based journalist.