And the increasingly compelling case of monarchy restoration

                                                                                                                                                          By Bihari Krishna Shrestha While the royal massacre of 2001 leading to the demise of King Birendra along with many royal family members has been over two decades old and Nepal has been declared a republic in the meantime for more than a decade and a half, the issue of monarchy restoration, presumably as a countervail to the chronically corrupt multiparty politics of the country remains an active agenda in the country that intermittently brings vast masses of people on the streets of Kathmandu, but occasionally, also in other towns such as Pokhara that saw an unprecedented procession in support of the agenda just over a couple of years ago. A source has it that there are some 83 "Rajabadi" groups in existence in Nepal, except that they have not been able to find a common platform to work for more coordinated and invigorated action. Two small political parties, in particular, have been at the forefront of this agenda in the recently held local elections, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), now resurgent under the new leadership of a Janajati politician, Rajendra Lingden, and another, Sajha Bibeksheel Party (SBP) under Rabindra Mishra. But strangely, even the two failed to form a coalition that would have given them much needed to embellish critical mass and possibly better results than their utterly poor showing in the polls. But in any case, the point here is that there is an increasing trident pro-monarchy force in existence in Nepal that views itself as the possible countervail for the hopelessly corrupt parties and their politicians of the day. Return of monarchy - Historical antecedents Three Shah Kings had set the tone for the persistence of the agenda of monarchy restoration even after a decade and half of the nation has gone republican. While King Prithivi Narayan's founding of the nation and his great nation-building counsels (Dibya Upadesh) have remained the evergreen mantra for good governance and balanced foreign relations, King Mahendra put those counsel to real test and practice while steering the ship of state during the difficult period from 1955 on until he died in 1971. His very first problem was to ensure conditions for the assurance of the sovereignty of his landlocked country. While there was no diplomatic relation with the northern neighbor China, the newly independent and unduly ambitious southern neighbor India -- which went on to annex Hyderabad, Goa and Sikkim at different times -- was eyeing the same in Nepal too by successfully managing to plant Indian functionaries throughout Nepal's civil and military administrations. Mahendra, against all odds, had not only managed to establish diplomatic relations with China but also sufficiently deepened the latter's interest in Nepal by building the historic road to China. And by working with such nationally-minded politicians like Tank Prasad Acharya and Kritinidhi Bista, King Mahendra had finally managed to rid the country of the undue Indian influence. More domestically, he authored many far-reaching reforms in the social, economic and political life of the nation such as the abolition of the caste disparity, land reform leading to guarantees of the right of the tenants and increased production, abolition of principalities and restructuring of the nation's administration, to name just a few. Politically, he also sensed multiparty politics being irresponsibly corrupt that also threatening the very fabric of the integrity of the nation. So, learning from India's socialist leader, Jai Prakash Narain -- who too had become disgruntled with the hopeless performance of the Westminster style parliamentary democracy in India by the late fifties and had gone on to author a "Plea for the Reformulation of Indian polity" in 1959 that advocated for a five-tiered panchayat system for India -- King Mahendra had launched a novel experiment in participatory democracy in the form of four-tiered partyless Panchayat system that organically rose from the village panchayats at the grassroots to the National Panchayat at the apex.

King Mahendra

King Mahendra's style of politics was a dignified one. While the Indian establishment was vehemently angry with him due to his purging of undue Indian interference in Nepal, Indian politicians nonetheless never took him for granted and dealt with him with awe and respect befitting the monarch of a sovereign country. Similarly, during the mid-Sixties, there was a widespread international outcry against Nepal led by the US for the King's decision to open up road connection with communist China. King Mahendra then, as recently revealed in an interview by Dr. Bhekh Bahadur Thapa, had sent the latter as his special emissary to explain to the US authorities why Nepal needed alternative road access to China. Clearly, it belonged to the dignity with which King Mahendra's conducted the affairs of state that he was able to successfully draw the attention of the American superpower then. At least in terms of chronology, it was following that development that the US then had made a U-turn on its decision to withdraw its assistance to Nepal's most important development sector, the village development -- which had since been redefined as Panchayat Development then -- and went on to involve itself in a major way that continued up until the end of panchayat polity in 1990.  King Birendra's reign: Continuity and change  King Birendra for his part had largely followed in the footsteps of King Mahendra with an even more augmented focus on national development, even as new challenges made it necessary for him to refine and recalibrate Nepal's foreign policy in particular. While King Mahendra, following his assumption of power in the 1960 coup found it relatively easy to deal with subdued India due to the latter's defeat in the 1962 war with China, Birendra had to contend with Jawaharlal Nehru's more reckless and ambitious daughter, Indira Gandhi, and grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, who, having largely forgotten the demoralizing effect of the Sino-Indian war, were more belligerent with smaller neighbors accounting for such adventurism like dismemberment of Pakistan, the annexation of Sikkim and military intervention in Sri Lanka. Birendra's call for Nepal to be recognized as a "Zone of Peace" was both a preemptive shield against India's aggressive intents as well as an appeal to the world to build moral and other pressures on immediate neighbors, mainly India in particular, to leave Nepal alone.  Similarly, Birendra also doubled down on national development with enhanced priority for regional balance through the creation of the five development regions in the country that today continue to find resonance even in the ongoing debate on federalization. As things stand, the newly created federal provinces continue to resemble what the development regions stood for and still continue to remain a part of the national debate. While King Mahendra toured the country extensively before and after his 1960 coup, King Birendra made regional visits for extended lengths of time a regular feature of his style of governance. It was this close-up acquaintance with the ground realities of the country that led to the reformulation of the country's decentralization policy in 1982 now focused on the empowerment of the users themselves at the grassroots. The soundness of this approach to give greater political space to even the most deprived in the community is very much in evidence with the grand success of Nepal's endeavour to restore its forest wealth through the nationwide network of forest user groups. While King Gyanendra had succeeded his brother under more tragic circumstances of the Palace Massacre of 2001, it was also a period marked by aggravated Indian interference in the form of the insurgency of the so-called Nepali Maoists whom India had officially designated "terrorists" but had sheltered, aided and abetted nonetheless. After all, historically, it belonged to the audacity of King Gyanendra to tell India's PM Manmohan Singh at the Bangladesh SAARC summit that "terrorism is terrorism. There cannot be good and bad terrorism". That probably set the stage for republicanism with India's Trojan horses in action in Nepal during those fateful years in the first decade of this century. Increasingly strident call for monarchy restoration 

King Birendra

The multiparty dispensation that the Nepalese politicians were able to restore with active help from India in 1990 has spent an equal length of time, three decades, as did the party-free panchayat regime. What Nepal has seen all these three decades is wanton and worsening corruption at the hands of these politicians so much so that it has indeed become very difficult for people to tell that a certain politician is not corrupt for sure. As things stand, just about every single politician in Nepal remains a corrupt man or woman necessarily. 

King Gyanendra

While democracy is believed to be self-correcting, after Trump, this theory has been challenged even in the US by at least one author, Fionna Hill, who has maintained that democracy is not self-correcting, "it needs attention", although she had stopped short of what that attention could be. But in the case of Nepal, there are no external forces of help such as the EU telling nations aspiring to join the club to properly democratize itself before it qualifies for membership. While China has refrained from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, India's Babus and politicians alike like nothing better than being seen and acknowledged as the kingmaker in Nepal with all the evil consequences that lay in front of us, such as blockades, Maoist terrorism and so on. So, the only hope for Nepal for putting its democracy on the course is to find an indigenous force to countervail these corrupt and mindless politicians who rule over the country only to bleed it white through boundless corruption. It is the institution of the Nepalese monarchy that has stood the test of time historically as being a potent force in the service to the nation.