Every year, on Nepal’s Democracy Day, Gyanendra Shah, the country’s former monarch, addresses his former subjects via video. Shah generally bemoans the state of the country, offers platitudes, and ends with the customary royal invocation of Pashupatinath as Nepal’s protector deity.
This year was different. A day before Democracy Day, Shah issued a call to action, asking all Nepalis to join him in “protecting the nation” and “maintaining national unity.” “The time has come,” he said, ominously.
That call apparently resonated with many. On March 9, Shah returned to Kathmandu from Pokhara to rapturous chants of “Raja aau, desh bachau” (come king, save the country) from a crowd thousands strong that had gathered somewhat spontaneously. After consulting with his loyalists, Shah sanctioned a formal demonstration in his name on March 28.
March 28 began peacefully but ended in chaos. What was intended as a peaceful demonstration devolved into violence as demonstrators lobbed stones and police responded with tear gas. As the mob grew more unruly, burning down buildings and vehicles and looting a nearby supermarket, police responded with deadly force. Sabin Maharjan, a 29-year-old driver, was caught up in the demonstration while on his way to pick up his vehicle after repairs. He died after being shot in the chest. Suresh Rajak, a local television journalist, burned to death in a building set on fire by protestors. Nearly two dozen others were shot and hundreds of protestors and security forces were injured.
For years, Nepal’s former monarchy has been experiencing a small but vocal resurgence in popularity. The March 28 rally was not the largest pro-monarchy demonstration in recent history, but it was the most violent and most visible. There has always been a small coterie of ordinary Nepalis and politicians who have harbored a desire to see the monarchy reinstated, but their rising numbers suggests that more and more Nepalis are disillusioned with the current political system. Yet, reestablishing the monarchy is not the solution; instead, Nepal needs genuine democracy and effective governance to address the underlying issues fueling this monarchist sentiment.
The Shifting Tides of Monarchist Sentiment
Nepal abolished the monarchy in 2007; yet there has always been grumbling that “foreign hands,” primarily western powers like the United States and the European Union, were behind the dismissal of the 240-year-old institution and with it, Nepal’s national identity as a Hindu state. This narrative persists despite the fact that it was the first Constituent Assembly — arguably the most diverse elected body in the history of Nepal — that voted in its very first sitting to abolish the monarchy, demonstrating significant domestic political will for change.
Back in 2007, Gyanendra Shah accepted the decision of the Constituent Assembly and went quietly, choosing to lay low. He gave no interviews, but, at times, made public appearances that almost always drew a crowd, whether in remote Nepal or at a posh nightclub in Kathmandu. He never commented specifically on anything political, choosing instead to make vague, sweeping statements about the state of the country. But as a former successful businessman, Shah is astute; he has sensed how the tides have changed over the years, both domestically and internationally.
Domestically, disillusionment with the three major political parties – the Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) – has been rising. Nepal has had 13 governments since the monarchy ended, with the leaders of the three major parties taking turns as chief executive, like a game of musical chairs. With no one able to achieve a significant majority in parliament, the parties have been more concerned with propping up their coalition governments rather than creating jobs or effective policymaking. Meanwhile, ordinary Nepalis are deserting the country in droves every year. According to Nepal’s Department of Immigration, 856,422 Nepalis migrated for work abroad in 2024. Similarly, 119,409 left for education.
The end of the monarchy and the transition to a federal secular republic was supposed to harken a “new Nepal,” one where representation, dignity, and prosperity would be equally shared. The Nepali state has certainly grown more representative, with a Madhesi President and a woman President, but this progress is now seeing pushback. The parties are attempting to roll back inclusion provisions and have found ingenious ways to circumvent quotas for women and other groups during elections. A small coterie of business elites with close links to the political class has grown wealthy and powerful.
Yet, reestablishing the monarchy is not the solution; instead, Nepal needs genuine democracy and effective governance to address the underlying issues fueling this monarchist sentiment.
Corruption scandals involving high-profile politicians have not helped either. A scheme to disguise Nepali citizens as Bhutanese refugees eligible for resettlement in the United States landed a former home minister in jail. Yet, the three main political parties have either looked the other way or are actively suppressed scandals. Discontent and disillusionment have led Nepalis to seek alternatives, but political challengers, like the newly minted Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), have been embroiled in corruption scandals of their own. Although, many Nepalis believe that the RSP is being persecuted by the mainstream parties because they pose a political threat to their dominance. Many have thus turned towards a romanticized, idealized past of the 1990s when the monarchy, despite being ceremonial, kept the parties on a tight leash and commanded respect.
However, given Nepal’s geographic and historical proximity to its powerful neighbor to the south, regional dynamics have also inevitably shaped the internal political landscape.
Examining Regional Politics
India has always played an outsized role in Nepal due to longstanding cultural, religious, and political ties. The rise of Hindutva politics in India has given many in Nepal cause for concern that the right-wing conservative ideology will cross the border— especially through revived calls for a monarchist Hindu state.
Yogi Adityanath, the saffron-clad Hindu nationalist priest-turned-politician, has ruled Uttar Pradesh, one of five Indian states that border Nepal, since 2017. Adityanath is the head priest of the Gorakhnath Temple, which the Shah dynasty holds sacred. Adityanath has commented publicly that Nepal should reclaim its identity as a “Hindu state” and has met with Shah multiple times. A 2022 U.S. State Department report accused Adityanath’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of funding Nepali politicians to lobby for Hindu statehood. It was thus not surprising to see a poster of Adityanath at the March 9 demonstration.
Hindu hardliners like Adityanath and others in the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the patron organization of India’s ruling BJP, see Nepal going secular as a mistake. In 2021, while on a visit to Nepal, then BJP spokesperson Vijay Sonkar Shastri remarked that Nepal “was, is and will remain a Hindu state.” However, Adityanath and others have been wary of conflating a Hindu state with the monarchy. Ranjit Rae, former Indian Ambassador to Nepal, wrote in a recent op-ed that despite historical and kinship ties, India’s experience with Nepal’s monarchy has “been far from satisfactory,” as it allegedly fueled anti-Indian sentiment and sought closer ties with China.
The current Indian administration has been cautious, refraining from commenting publicly on the protests. Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar told his counterpart, Nepali Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba, at the recent Raisina Dialogue that India had no hand in the current monarchist upsurge. Upon returning from India, Rana Deuba told reporters that India “supports the democratic system in Nepal.”
But New Delhi is not wholly supportive of the current ruling Nepali dispensation either. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has been a constant thorn in New Delhi’s side, cultivating a reputation as an anti-Indian nationalist by raking up a border dispute and courting the Chinese.
Oli has challenged Gyanendra to contest elections if he wants to get back into politics, but monarchy supporters argue that a king does not need legitimacy through the ballot box. Royalists are now organizing nationwide rallies to build public support, arguing that the monarchy’s legitimacy comes not from elections but the people’s will.
Creating Coalitions for Democracy
While the pro-monarchy movement has been building for years, it is now finding more support than ever before. Public discontent against the prevailing system is one answer but there are other factors that are also contributing to Shah’s newfound popularity. Monarchist parties like the Rastriya Prajatantra Party argue that they do not want an active monarchy but a constitutional one, where the king is a unifying symbol for a country that is fracturing among ethnic lines. The king remains popular across the country, they say, and would thus make for an ideal symbol around which to unite all Nepalis.
The new republican federalist order has also largely been a failure. In 2015, when Nepal officially transitioned from a unitary Hindu kingdom to a federal, secular republic via a new constitution, the promise was that prosperity would follow. Instead, the federal system has led to a larger financial burden on the state, which has been passed down to citizens via new extensive taxes. There are 275 members of the federal House of Representative, 110 members of the federal National Assembly, and 550 Provincial Assembly members, all of whom receive salaries and various amenities from the state. For many Nepalis, the political parties have created a system that benefits them at the expense of everyone else. During the monarchy, even if the king was corrupt, it was just one man and one family that was corrupt, they say. Today, this narrative goes, there are close to a thousand mini-monarchs, all of whom are corrupt.
While the pro-monarchy movement has been building for years, it is now finding more support than ever before.
But why would Nepalis willingly go back to a system that turns citizens into subjects? For one, many of the monarchists of today are too young to remember the heyday of the monarchy, or its problems. They learn of the monarchy through news reels and photographs of the monarchs being welcomed with pomp and splendor by American presidents and Indian prime ministers. They contrast those images with the favors that Nepali politicians now seem to seek from Indian functionaries. During the monarchy, Nepal commanded greater respect internationally and bringing back the monarchy is one way to regain that respect, they believe.
They are not wholly wrong. The political system of today is characterized more by corruption and nepotism than equitable inclusive development. But going back to a system rooted in hierarchy and subservience is not the solution. Instead, the only path forward is true democracy – both for the country and within the parties themselves. To enable this, political parties should strongly consider leadership transition. All of the top leaders of the major political parties are in their seventies, ruling over a country that has a majority between 16 to 40 years of age. Second, while Nepal’s political system may have changed, its faces have not: the same politicians who were ministers during the monarchy are back in those positions under the republic, some as often as 20 times. These politicians have benefitted enormously from continual positions of power, often at the cost of the people. Handing over party leadership to the younger generation would send a message that these leaders are committed to renewal and not just clinging to power.
Next, policymakers need to enact laws that will turn federalism into a reality. The backlash against the federal system is largely because the provinces do not have the necessary legal instruments to function properly. Unable to access resources or exercise power, the provinces are largely seen as a pointless but expensive feature of Nepali democracy, systematically held back by a federal government unwilling to cede power. Proper realization of federalism would go a long way towards instilling faith in the new republican order.
There are other small but effective ways to reinvigorate the Nepali people’s faith in republicanism and multi-party democracy over the hereditary system of the monarchy. The generations that are now growing up need to be taught a fuller history of the monarchy, including its regressive and hierarchical elements, and why it was necessary to transition to a republic. A zero-tolerance approach to corruption, something Prime Minister Oli has expressed but never realized, would be welcome to a vast majority of Nepalis. Better delivery of basic services like issuance of passports, driving licenses and national identity cards would also garner wide-spread appreciation.
These are just a start but can go some way towards showing Nepalis that democracy is a system that can always be improved upon, while the monarchy is an ossified institution that brooks no change. The mainstream parties must be able to offer something other than platitudes to the people if they wish to counter the pro-monarchy wave. Otherwise, if the wave crests and they are caught in the undertow, they will have no one to blame but themselves.
Also Read: Nepal in 2024: Has Political Instability Finally Come to an End?
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of South Asian Voices, the Stimson Center, or our supporters.
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Image 1: Rojan Shrestha/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Image 2: Rojan Shrestha/NurPhoto via Getty Images
