Spread the love

By Rabi Raj Thapa

Why is the geographical set-up of the Kingdom of Nepal rectangular and not oval or square? Why did King Prithvi Narayan Shah expand east and west rather than north and south? These are questions related to the unification of Nepal.

“The story of the unification of Nepal begins with the Himalayas and the Himalayan foothills. Just visualize what life in these hills must have been like, if one is to understand what the unification of Nepal implied. He must fit his thought patterns to the shape of the Himalayas and understand that the Nepali is born of this land and this land is in his blood; that the Nepali has tamed these mountains and hills in his own way; and that he has learned the art of survival under the most trying circumstances. To lose sight of this fact would be to uproot the Nepali and strip his actions of much of their meaning.”

These are the words of a historian who knew and understood Nepal in a real sense.

Today, the Nepali Congress and various communist factions vying for state power may have the least knowledge or interest, except to run externally fuelled and dictated agendas, ignoring who created Nepal, and why and how it was created.

Sovereignty and patriotism cannot be bought, borrowed, or imported. Nepal now has an imported political system that is far different in its original form, shape, and state dynamics.

Although Nepal was conservative and primitive, it had its own price and value in global geopolitics. Nepali youth fought in wars all over the world, with names but without a nation. They carried their identity as “Gorkhas” from the land they were born in, with “Nepali” as a suffix.

Today, India has awakened as Akhanda Bharat and China as a land of Confucian civilization. Nepal was far more aware and conscious during the pre-Rana and Rana periods, while its northern and southern neighbors were struggling for national identity and survival. Now, Nepal itself is struggling for survival.

The unification of more than four scores of petty kingdoms into Greater Nepal stands out as one of the great challenges of eighteenth-century Asia. Clearly, the unification of Greater Nepal would have been an appallingly difficult task for any of these petty states. Yet tiny Gorkha accepted this challenge and, in spite of terrain and economic and political constraints, swept these kingdoms aside and founded the modern state of Nepal.

Today, the term unification itself may mean different things to different people. These may include military, political, legal and judicial, administrative, cultural, and religious unification. It should be clear that these degrees of unification are not watertight compartments.

Unification cannot be achieved without a unifying agent, effort, and apparatus. During the unification of Nepal, the agent was a king named Prithvi Narayan Shah; the effort was his unification campaign; and the apparatus was the people of Char Jat and Chhattis Varna—a princely kingdom of 12,000 households, with only about 20,000 men of military age.

The ability to share ambition is a mark of leadership, and the extent of this ability in Prithvi Narayan Shah can be measured only by his achievements.

Compare this with the leadership and achievements of federal Congress and communist leaders, and all those queuing up to have darshan of foreign interlocutors and deep-state coaches. Think of leaders who have no vision or dreams beyond party alliances, collusion, and conspiracies to become cosmetic leaders of the people of Nepal.

Let us hope that Gen Z will learn something about Nepal’s great King Prithvi Narayan Shah and pay tribute on the auspicious 304th Prithivi Jayanti and National Unification Day!

(Some excerpts are taken from the book “The Rise of the House of Gorkha” by Ludwig F. Stiller, S.J., 2017, Educational Publishing House.)