As children we revered our king and thought he could accomplish any difficult task. In winter, when much of the farmland would be fallowed between crops, hopping terraces while keeping an eye on the grazing cattle was our pastime. We’d jump even over those twice or thrice our height, yet wouldn’t dare come down higher slopes for the fear of breaking our legs on the hard hillside surface.

This only the King could do!

Villagers thought the king could do everything. He could bring bikas (development) to the backwaters if they had his attention. The biggest rally I saw as a child in Tehrathum was when most villagers flocked to the district headquarters Myanglung to catch a glimpse of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya and hear their voices. The hours-long wait for the king to helicopter from the army barracks in Dhankuta paid off when we saw him waving at the mass after the dust kicked up by the flight had settled.

Birendra’s aura had not faded even after the restoration of democracy in 1990, when he relinquished his absolute authority and put political parties in charge of state affairs. Even the Maoists, who waged an insurgency against the hard-fought-for political system, did not criticise the king much. Nor did they initially attack the Royal Nepal Army even as police outposts across the country were being stormed.

Then came the biggest mystery and misfortune in the Nepali monarchy’s 240-year history. Birendra’s family was gunned down in the heavily-guarded royal palace in 2001. A royal probe instituted in its wake blamed then-crown prince Dipendra for the massacre while he lay unconscious for a couple of days, was declared king in coma and died. This investigation came under the watch of Gyanendra, the first of Birendra’s two brothers, who had sat on the throne as a four-year-old when their grandfather, King Tribhuvan, revolted against the reigning Ranas, risking his position.

Doomed to failure

Gyanendra’s public image was not that good. People were not ready to believe that Dipendra might have single-handedly shot at his father, mother, brother, sister and grandmother. There could be a bigger conspiracy, even foreign, to finish off their dear king, without leaving his trace. Maoist ideologue Baburam Bhattarai wrote an opinion piece in the largest circulated vernacular daily, Kantipur, comparing the incident to the Kot massacre staged by Jung Bahadur before he imposed a dynastic Rana rule on Nepalis for 104 years until 1951.

Gyanendra struggled to win over ordinary Nepalis for the five years of becoming king as he toured the country for public reception at the height of the insurgency. He alienated democratic forces that had faced the wrath of both the Maoists who killed their cadres and his increasingly autocratic rule. Having ultimately mustered the firepower against guerilla attacks on a unified force of ordinary police, the paramilitary APF and the infantry army, Gyanendra cornered the Maoists and pushed them to team up with the agitating parties. Their combined strength finally tamed and dethroned him. The king left the palace in 2008 in a whimper.

The royalists are now working overtime to bring him back. For reasons, they cite Nepal’s arguable cultural slide, economic troubles and the country’s allegedly diminished global standing as a federal democratic republic. Their current surge threatens the collective leadership of politicians who rose through the ranks as ordinary citizens.

Mission unclear

The monarchists’ argument, however, is weak. Many of them, including the Maoist-turned-UML-turned-rash royalist Durga Prasai, have no clear answer whether they want a Bhutanese or British model of monarchy back in Nepal. They have no idea how to fix the country's ailing economy, stop hordes of people deserting the land, improve Nepal’s global stature, or thwart threats to its existence between two of Asia’s mightiest nations.

Most people rallying for the cause of reinstating Gyanendra at the Narayanhiti Palace seemed to be youths disillusioned by the political parties’ misgovernance, corrupt practices and blatant exploitation of national wealth rather than those having faith in the former monarch’s track record.

As Gyanendra nears his eighties, the longest life for a Nepali king, there will be obvious questions about his succession if he were to be the monarch again—by a popular uprising, a two-thirds parliamentary majority in his favour or with the army’s backing. The image of his son, then-crown prince Paras, is that of a reckless prince. He’s already in frail health after years of self-exiled life, drinking and substance abuse and cases of pulmonary obstruction. Besides, he, as is publicly known, harbours no ambition of becoming the monarch. Gyanendra’s grandson, Hridayendra, is barely out of college and is not trained in statecraft.

Way not paved

In parliamentary politics, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party openly advocates reviving Nepal as a Hindu kingdom. It’s a small party, often accused of siding with republican forces when it came to enjoying the benefits by becoming their governing ally. Kamal Thapa, who stood firm in the monarchy's favour while the whole nation was polarised against it in the 2008 elections, kept the torch burning throughout the Constituent Assembly. After the second CA delivered a constitution in 2015, consigning the monarchy to history, Thapa went with the tide. When he lost the party presidency to the current leader Rajendra Lingden, another royalist smeared for aligning with the incumbent communist prime minister KP Sharma Oli, he accused Gyanendra of defeating him as RPP chief.

On the same royalist plank, Rabindra Mishra, a latecomer to the party, is another driver of the pro-monarchy campaign. The former BBC journalist, who has a huge following on social media, did not win a parliamentary seat after foraying into politics in 2017. Gyanendra Shahi, an RPP lawmaker in the federal parliament from Jumla, is brutal in his attack of the federalists. Shahi has an appeal as a rousing young leader for the people alienated by the post-monarchy politics but is often dismissed as being crass. Two other old horses, Prakash Chandra Lohani and Pashupati Shumshere Rana, no longer have the strength to carry the monarchy’s torch.

In this scenario, the pro-monarchical rallies seen recently may not sustain long enough to reinstate Gyanendra. At best, they could be a public outpouring of frustration against the current regime. At worst, they might be instigated by dreamers across the border of the monarchy in Nepal as they cannot make their own country a Hindu state.

People's collective memory is short. They quickly forget the troubles of the past and amplify the problems present. As I see things more clearly now, even a king has no quick fixes to the issues confronting us. But the Nepali political parties cannot afford to ignore this manifestation of growing public disenchantment.