Prime Minister G P Koirala was in ecstatic move as he was going to sit in the chair that kings used to occupy before, and that there would be battery of Hindu scholars reciting ‘Saraswati mantra’.But he felt humiliated and undermined when he noticed that the head priest — Janardan Raj Pande — who was to lead the recitation was missing along with his two main deputies. In anger, Koirala ordered that they be ‘suspended’. Home Secretary Umesh Kanta Mainali nodded his head on obeisance, and on Thursday evening, the order was complied. But Koirala, ageing and senile, had no idea that the post of the head priest and the deputy head priest had been abolished soon after the interim constitution came into existence in January 2007 as Nepal then had ceased to be a ‘Hindu country’ and was declared a secular state.But why did Koirala , an atheist who even refused to follow the normal rituals when his father and mother died, chose to be seen as a ‘Hindu’ CEO of a secular Nepal now? There are many theories. Possibly, because the constitution and parliamentary declarations say that the prime minister will continue to discharge the role and duties that the king had been performing earlier, Koirala took upon himself the role that the king used to perform as head of the ‘Hindu state’ earlier.The ceremony was being held in Basantpur Durbar, the old royal palace. And the missing priests, it is learnt, had gone to Narayanhiti Palace, where King Gyanendra lives. Since the priests have not been receiving salary from the state for more than nine months, they are no longer bound by government order.An official of the Ministry of General Administration said, “We issued notice for their suspension as otherwise the prime minister will be angry.”
