The last time Krishna Lama was able to use his legs, it was to jump from a two-storey building. He was fleeing from the frontline of Nepal’s political battle, chased by armed police, only to find himself trapped between a certain thrashing and an uncertain fall. He chose the latter.
Coming to in hospital a few hours later, kilometres away from his last memories in Gongabu, a suburb of Kathmandu, Krishna found himself unable to feel much below his neck. Sensation may never return, say doctors. But the loss, says the 26-year-old taxi driver, will be bearable if it helps end the Shah dynasty that has ruled the Himalayan kingdom for 237 years.
Krishna is a victim of a political war fought last week on the periphery of Nepal’s capital. Ranged against King Gyanendra, a chain-smoking royal who seeks advice from astrologers, is almost every section of society.
Doctors, lawyers, housewives, ex-soldiers, students and many others marched every day last week in defiance of curfew orders, some waving party flags, others holding up effigies of the monarch. The struggle has cost at least 15 lives and has seen hundreds injured and thousands detained.
On Saturday, hours after the king offered to ”hand power back to the people”, the demonstrators were back on the streets with their reply — 100 000 massed on the ring road to march on the royal palace. The authorities quickly cut cellphone connections — SMSs were being used to coordinate protests.
The fighting has left Kathmandu ragged and smoking. Pavements have been ripped up and telegraph poles toppled; the smoke from burning rubber fills the air. On Saturday, in the suburb of Chabel, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to scatter protesters. In the neighbourhood of Thapathali, live ammunition was sprayed into a tide of humanity threatening to break through a line of soldiers. More than 100 were hospitalised.
The army deployed water cannon and armoured vehicles with mounted machine guns at intersections into the city centre. Yet protesters broke through to Thamel — a maze of streets lined with backpacker hotels that lies 1,6km from the royal household — only to be beaten back with shields and canes. It took nature to do what the king and his men could not: for an hour, the heavens opened and the rain emptied the streets, bringing to an end the day’s clashes.
What appears clear is that monarch’s attempt to defuse the Nepal’s political crisis by offering a return to multiparty democracy has failed. Out on the streets, many say they just cannot trust the king.
Standing by a burning pile of rubbish on a city highway, Mukesh Sah, a 23-year-old medical student, said the king’s move was just ”political drama”. ”He is making a fool of the people. We do not believe he will give over power. The people want him to go.”
Political parties, too, came out on Saturday to dismiss the royal offer to name a prime minister for a new government, sensing that the public mood had turned decisively towards a republic. ”We will not accept. We will continue the protests,” Madhav Kumar Nepal, general secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal, told a cheering crowd in Kathmandu.
Manendra Rijel, a spokesperson of the largest party, the Nepali Congress, said public opinion had outrun palace thinking. ”I think everyone, including the international community, has to understand that the protests have been largely peaceful. If [the people’s] wishes are not respected, that may no longer be the case.”
The political landscape in Nepal is as varied as its topography. The palace ceded power in 1990 to a Parliament and prime minister, but retained Nepal’s status as a Hindu kingdom. Many older Nepalis regard the king as a reincarnation of the god Vishnu. Democrats come in varies types, from nationalists to communists. Then there are the Maoists, whose decade-old ”people’s war” has claimed the lives of 13 000 people.
The turning point, however, came in February last year, when King Gyanendra suspended parliament and installed a court in a bid to defeat the rebel insurgency. For 14 months, Nepal has lived under the king’s autocratic, and often bruising, direct rule.
Since last November, the seven largest parties and the Maoist guerrillas have had an understanding that would see the rebels give up the gun in return for elections to an Assembly that would rewrite the Constitution, making the crown either powerless or obsolete. It is this key demand that the king is not addressing.
Politicians are also nervous of taking a leap into the unknown. The parties are wary of allowing the king to retain a constitutional power that would enable him to seize control again, especially as he would retain command of the military.
In a typical piece of theatre, elusive Maoist leader Prachanda sent an e-mail to journalists in which he called the palace plan a ”conspiracy by the feudal elements”. ”The sea of people on the streets proves that the Nepali people want to get rid of the feudal regime forever,” he said.
European ambassadors, however, are urging opposition leaders to consider the offer. ”The parties don’t think [the king] has done enough, but we think it is a basis on which we can move forward,” British ambassador Keith George Bloomfield said after meeting the leaders. After days of strong words from the United States and India, the palace has sought solace in such comments.
Nepal, strategically situated between India and China, has been either under the Shah kings or dynastic maharajahs since the late 18th century. Democracy has existed for only two short-lived occasions, in 1950 and the 1990s.
The beginning of the end for the last phase of democracy came when the last king, Birendra, and his family were assassinated in the palace by a drunk crown prince. His brother Gyanendra took over and made no secret of his disdain for elected officials.
Whether the monarchy can survive remains moot. The answer, say some, may be found in a Nepali legend about King Prithvi Narayan Shah, the founder of the modern Nepali state. The tale goes that he once met a god disguised as a sage who, to test his loyalty, offered him some yoghurt that had been vomited up.
If the king consumed it, the Shah line would have lasted forever. Instead, King Prithvi threw it away, and some fell on his feet. So, the dynasty would only last 10 generations, one monarch for every toe. Birendra was the 10th Shah king. — Guardian Unlimited Â