The emperor wears no clothes

Who is this man in any case? King Gyanendra, even during the reign of his brother, King Birendra, had displayed a distinct instinct for power brokering and palace intrigue. He and his supporters are believed to have been behind the bombs that had gone off at various points outside the royal palace in the June of 1985 8212; a crude attempt to stop a Nepali Congress satyagraha 8212; but there is no way this can be confirmed. He is also believed to have been behind the attempts of the palace to scuttle the drafting of the new constitution of 1990 that rendered the king a constitutional monarch rather than an absolute ruler. Again there is no way this can be confirmed. Today, after the regicide that shook the Himalayan kingdom in June 2001 and which King Gyanendra himself famously described as a 8220;sudden burst of fire8221;, the quasi-spiritual aura that had always been attached to the palace the monarch in Nepal is traditionally regarded as an incarnation of Lord Vishnu has been replaced by the odour of murder. Here is a king, then, who has thrived behind the numerous screens of opacity that has shrouded Nepal8217;s royalty, only to emerge as an utterly ruthless and despotic figure. He has never enjoyed even the weakened public veneration that had once been accorded his brother. It8217;s time, therefore, for the world to say that the emperor wears no clothes.

India, or so another argument goes, must support the king for its own sake, to ensure that the Maoists in Nepal are defeated conclusively and for all time so that their contagion does not spread to this country. This is mere delusion. The fact is that even after almost ten years of insurgency, all the king8217;s horses and all the king8217;s men have not been able to defeat the Maoists. Sustained military operations with all the weaponry that India and the world have made available to the king have only seen the red brigades extend and consolidate their presence.

Maoism first surfaced in Jhapali, in the far-eastern terai region of Nepal and was the direct fall-out, it is believed, of West Bengal8217;s Naxalbari movement of the late 60s. One of the first demands these Maoist cadres made was land reform. A peasantry, that had been crushed under the heel of the brutal landlord, was quickly won over. Today, the writ of the Maoists runs almost across the entire country with the partial exception of the Kathmandu Valley, as the success of their innumerable blockade calls have proved. Map the country8217;s poverty geographically and one will get a graphic idea of Maoism8217;s sphere of influence. The three broad ecological demarcations of Nepal 8212; terai, hill and mountain 8212; tell the story of wealth creation in this country. An estimated 53 per cent of people of the terai, 56 per cent of those in the hills and 72 per cent of mountain folk are officially counted as living below the poverty line while only 4 per cent of those located in the Kathmandu Valley are as impoverished. The resources of the hills and mountains have gone to service Kathmandu and its elites under a stultifying tributory system where family oligarchies deftly extracted wealth but never thought to invest in or develop the hinterland.

It follows from this that the King and Maoism are, in fact, inseparable twins, conjoined by a rigid feudal order, an extractive economy and a political system that has no use for human rights. To understand the great injustice that has been perpetrated on Nepal, one need only pit Sri Lanka against Nepal. Both happen to be South Asian countries of roughly similar size Sri Lanka has 20 million; Nepal, 27 million. While the mortality of children under five in Sri Lanka is 19, in Nepal it is 104; while 89 per cent of Sri Lankan women are literate, only 21.7 per cent of Nepali women can read and write. One can go on and on.

Yet there is is really no good reason why Nepal had to exist in this developmental black hole. As The Report of the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation, observed just recently, it is the second richest country in the world in water resources after Brazil, with more than 6,000 rivers and rivulets. It has the potential to generate 83,000 megawatts of hydro-electricity but currently generates only 319 megawatts 8212; with only 15 per cent of its population having access to electricity. If Nepal had been fortunate enough to have a more equitable, democratic social order and an enlightened, progressive leadership, if it had not been harnessed to the palace for well over two centuries, it may have been able to convert its jala shakti into a jana shakti and emerged a powerhouse.

It is amazing that the world 8212; and India 8212; have been content with only threatening to withdraw military aid to King Gyanendra8217;s regime. It is the Royal Nepal Army RNA, comprising 80,000 men and led by palace loyalists, which function as the king8217;s praetorian guard today. Since 2001, India has handed over Rs 360 crore in arms and ammunition to the RNA in order to defeat the Maoists. That is unlikely to happen. What is far more likely is that the army will shape up into a fine repressive instrument to keep Nepal at the royal heel. The king has already used his men in uniform to gag the media, guard the palace, tail political leaders, crack down on student protestors. They will increasingly function as the extension of the palace as the king consolidates his totalitarian hold on a nation, which in Manjushree Thapa8217;s evocative words, has been turned into a 8220;kingdom of fear8221;.