By Narayan Prasad Mishra   Nepal is a small country that is situated between two giant nations of the world. A dragon (China) is located to the north and an elephant (India) to the south. It is an ancient country. Its history goes back centuries. Many dynasties – Shah, Malla, Licchavi, Kirat, etc. – have ruled this country. Its total land area is 143,350 km2 (55,348 sq. miles). It is smaller than the states of Andra Pradesh and Odisha in India and those of Texas and California in the USA. Its most recent population count is 29,423,045. Though it is small in size, it is rich in natural beauty. Its high snow peaks and tall mountains, including the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest (8848.86 meters, 29,032 ft.), attract people worldwide. It is a favorite tourist destination because of Mount Everest and the holy birthplace of Lord Buddha, the messenger of love, compassion, and truth. Still more, it has ten world heritage sites approved by UNESCO. Of the ten, seven are in the Kathmandu Valley and emanate the peaceful beauty of their stone and wood carvings. The weather of Kathmandu, the capital, is considered a pleasant gift of the Creator – neither terribly hot nor terribly cold in the summer or winter. Every year hundreds of thousands of tourists from different countries come to visit this country.

King Prithivi Narayan Shah the Great

Though the world's geography has almost remained the same for generations, countries have undergone a historical and geographical change. Some of today's countries were not as significant and large as they are today. To see and experience this, we need not go to Europe or America; we see it in our own country, Nepal, and our neighbor, India. We all know that our country once had many principalities, petty kingdoms called the 22 states (Salyan, Rukum, Jumla, Jajarkot, Bajhang, Doti, Dang, Dailekh, Bajura, etc.) and 24 states (Tanahu, Lamjung, Kaski, Palpa, Butwol, Galkot, Nuwakot, etc.) before Prithvi Narayan Shah, the king of Gorkha, and his successors undertook a unification process from 1744 to 1816. Even in the Kathmandu Valley, we had three kingdoms – Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, and Patan – ruled by three kings. They were kings of what we call the Malla dynasty. They governed the Kathmandu Valley from the 12th to the 18th century. The Malla kings' palace compounds are what we now call Durbar Squares, and the beautiful pagoda-style temples with highly decorative wood and stone carvings exhibit the glory of this era. The case of India is the same. There were hundreds of princely states in all the present 28 states and eight union territories of India (Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Jammu, Kashmir, Hyderabad, Mysore, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madya Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Sikkim, etc.). Starting with Babar in 1526, the Muslim kings ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from the 16th to 18th century. It was called the Mughal Empire. Then the British ruled this country (from 1757 to 1857 through the East India Company, and from 1857 to 1947 through its own government). Once it obtained independence from British rule, India became a big country, the seventh-largest in the world by area, with hundreds of princely states. At the time of the British withdrawal, 565 princely states in the Indian subcontinent were officially recognized, not to mention thousands of zamindari estates and jagirs. Prithvi Narayan Shah became the first king of a consolidated Nepal after conquering the Kathmandu Valley's three kingdoms in 1769. During this time, Jayaprakash Malla, Tejnarsing Malla, and Ranajit Malla were the kings of Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur, respectively – the last of the Malla kings. Each city has a second name: Kathmandu is also called Kantipur; Bhaktapur, Bhadgaon; and Patan, Lalitpur. These three cities still have other names in the Newari language, spoken by Newars in the Valley. In that language, Kathmandu is called Yei; Patan, Yala; and Bhaktapur, Khopa. From India's British rule, we know that the East India Company was already in India when Prithvi Narayan Shah started ruling Nepal. George III ( George William Frederick ) was the king of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Augustus Henry Fitzroy was the British prime minister. The British Empire had its eyes on territory in every corner of the world. They had already taken vital, prominent states of India under their control. Their eyes fastened avidly also on Nepal. Our army was not well equipped when compared to the British. We can easily imagine, had Prithvi Narayan Shah not unified our petty kingdoms, what would have become of our tiny kingdoms in the face of British aggression. They would have vanished one by one. Sheer courage, talk of Gorkha bravery, and the khukuri (Nepalese knife) would have been for nought. It was the far-sightedness, wisdom, courage, and bravery of this one national hero that saved the day. Those who – forgetting the indisputable truth of his outstanding administration, neutral foreign policy, pro-national economic and commercial policies, social reforms to combat discrimination, and very conciliatory policies in dealing with conquered states – disrespect this national hero are unpardonably blind to the truth. After his rule and death, Prithvi Narayan Shah's son Bahadur Shah, as regent for the infant king Rana Bahadur Shah, exhibited his father's determination by extending Nepal's western boundary Sutlej River. Still, later rulers were unable for diverse reasons to protect the gains made. These included power struggles and internal conflicts among palace officials, the lack of arms and ammunition to meet strong enemies, and a weak economy. The country lost a massive area to British India under the Sugauli Treaty following the war from 1812 to 1814. That was unfortunate. But historical records tell of the bravery and love of the nation among such warriors and rulers as Bhimsen Thapa, Amar Singh Thapa, and Balabhadra Kumar. They did their best to protect our motherland and are worthy of being saluted by all. We can bask in the glory of these national figures. After the rise of Junga Bahadur Rana, we still had Shah kings, but the Rana prime ministers became a kind of king, as evidenced by the Sanskrit word of respect Shree being repeated three times in front of their title and name: Shree Teen Maharaj. This system, we might say, featured a de facto king behind a de jure one. The former made the latter a statue without power. Shree Teen Maharaj was an absolute monarch with the power of the gun. We call this period (1846–1951) the Rana regime. The first Rana, Jang Bahadur Rana, was a soldier who seized power through a conspiracy and made himself a permanent prime minister (and later on a so-called Shree Teen Maharaj). Still, later he made the Shree Teen Maharaj title hereditary, to be enjoyed in succession by his surviving brothers. In this way, the Rana regime ruled the country as a tyranny for 104 years, up to the democratic revolution of 1951. During this period, the Shah king remained a figurehead. The regime utterly oppressed and exploited the nation and its people and treated the country as their private domain and the people as their servants. Still, they zealously protected the country from what they deemed its enemies. By establishing cordial relations with India's British regime, Jang Bahadur Rana, the first Maharaj, managed to regain its lost land, including Kailali, Kanchanpur, Banke, and Bardiya districts. During the people's democratic movement against the Rana regime, King Tribhuvan sided with the people to topple the Ranas. In 1951 he returned to being the real king, this time of a democratic Nepal. Among the reminiscences of the Rana regime is many Rana palaces built in the European style by the Ranas for their families in Kathmandu. There are several books in the General Singh Collection at Tribhuvan University Central Library and in Keshar Library in Kathmandu that contain photographs documenting this palace architecture. These two collections are named after two sons of Chandra Shumsher Jang Bahadur Rana, the longest-serving ruler among the Rana Maharajas. The building named Shital Niwas, the present official residence of Nepal's President, is one such Rana palace. Many still exist. The government nationalized or bought some of them for government offices, including Harihar Bhawan, Keshar Mahal, Singha Mahal, Ananda Bhawan, Lalita Niwas, and Laxmi Niwas. During their reign, the Rana Maharajas and their families and close relatives lived like kings and queens. They all had big palaces surrounded by unimaginably large tracts of land. It was as if the whole of Kathmandu was their playground. The following were the successive Rana Maharajas:
  1. Jang Bahadur Rana
  2. Ranodip Singh Kunwar
  3. Bir Shumsher Jang Bahadur Rana
  4. Dev Shumsher Jang Bahadur Rana
  5. Chandra Shumsher Jang Bahadur Rana
  6. Bhim Shumsher Jang Bahadur Rana
  7. Juddha Shumsher Jang Bahadur Rana
  8. Padma Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana
  9. Mohan Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana