King and Country

While the aloofness from the public behind dark glasses – the signature of King Mahendra – has long been abandoned by his son King Birendra, his advisers over at the Narayanhiti Royal Palace in Kathmandu have not been able to stitch new clothes for the monarchy in the seven years of democracy. Rather than tailoring a useful social and cultural role for the monarchy, which would make its position unassailable much like the royalty of Spain, Japan or Thailand, the king´s advisers have been much too timid, and have lately been engaged in unnecessary brinkmanship. This stands amply exposed in the way they had the Nepali monarch attend to Hindu conservatives in India in October. The king and his queen, Aishwarya, made a trip to Hardwar-on-Ganga to inaugurate a convention on Hinduism, attended among others by the radical leadership of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party. This was an incongruous political gesture from the king for he cannot have been unaware of the narrow-minded and reactionary Hinduism espoused by those present, which is so different from the syncretistic hill Hinduism that has evolved in Nepal.

It is important for King Birendra not to exaggerate his country´s Hindu-ness, for Nepal is less ´Hindu´ than is believed by many (the population itself is about 70 percent Hindu rather than 90 percent which is the general belief). However, the very demarcation between who is Hindu and who Buddhist is so blurred in these hills of the Central Himalaya that such categorisation may be impossible and even irrelevant. The obscure edges between the two main faiths should be allowed to remain fuzzy, and the monarchy should help in that.