Every Prithvi Jayanti, Nepal does not merely commemorate the birth of King Prithvi Narayan Shah; it reenacts an argument about how nations ought to remember their modern-day founders, which is increasingly (and quite predictably) polarised. On one side are those who insist that Shah must be revered without qualification—as the reunifier of the nation, the architect of modern statehood, and thus a figure whose legacy must remain untouched by criticism (which is often characterised as foreign-funded). On the other side are those who approach him almost exclusively through the language of violence, conquest and cruelty, reducing a complex historical figure to a moral indictment. Between these two camps of sycophancy and iconoclasm, reason itself often disappears. This demonstrates an inability to hold praise and criticism together without collapsing into moral absolutes. In this race between veneration and vilification, history, proportion, balance and reason have constantly emerged as the ultimate losers.

Our near and distant friends offer instructive contrasts. George Washington, a general who secured independence and a statesman who voluntarily relinquished power, remains one of the most revered figures in American history. At the same time, he was a slave trader who actively participated in and benefited from a morally indefensible institution. That fact is neither hidden nor ignored in contemporary American scholarship or public discourse, just as the fact that one of America’s most celebrated presidents, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus during the American Civil War is not. Yet, Washington and Lincoln’s legacies have not been reduced only to slavery or civil rights violations—nor have their virtues in the War of Independence and the Civil War been erased because of their vices. The American approach, imperfect and contested as it is, demonstrates that criticism need not negate greatness.

Closer to home, India’s engagement with Mahatma Gandhi reveals both the necessity and the difficulty of such a balance. Gandhi is revered for leading a mass anti-colonial movement grounded in moral restraint and political imagination. At the same time, serious and uncomfortable questions have been raised about aspects of his personal conduct, including his so-called ‘experiments with truth’ involving celibacy tests by sleeping naked beside young women—some of them underage. Such conduct cannot be insulated from moral scrutiny. A society capable of acknowledging this does not weaken Gandhi’s political legacy; it strengthens its own moral seriousness. India’s current problem is not that Gandhi is criticised, but that Indian public discourse oscillates between blind veneration and total rejection by Gandhists and RSS-aligned hate mongers, respectively, both with comparable fervour.

Pakistan offers an even starker example of the dangers of sanctification. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder and the first Governor-General of the country, who has been constitutionally and culturally enshrined as the Quaid-e-Azam (Great Leader), has often been treated as beyond criticism. Critical academics like Pervez Hoodbhoy and Ishtiaq Ahmed—and even new generation political commentators like Faisal Warraich and Syed Muzammil Shah—have faced hostility for offering measured critiques of Jinnah’s politics or the consequences of Partition. The irony is that this hypersensitivity has impoverished Jinnah’s legacy, turning historical inquiry into a loyalty test.

Nepal’s debate over Shah increasingly resembles these pathologies. He is either elevated into near-divinity or flattened into villainy, and both positions misunderstand (and stop others from understanding) history.

There is no denying that Shah presided over acts that, viewed through contemporary moral frameworks, are deeply troubling. Accounts of wartime brutality, whether the harsh treatment of conquered populations in Kirtipur or the dehumanising skinning of POW Jayanta Rana in Nuwakot, cannot simply be brushed aside. At the same time, it is historically incoherent to apply 21st-century categories of international humanitarian law wholesale to 18th-century warfare. Concepts such as war crimes, proportionality and civilian protection emerged much later, through centuries of moral, legal and political evolution—codified only in the latter half of the 20th century.

This does not mean that ‘but everyone did it’ is an excuse; it merely means that judgment must be contextual, not anachronistic. As historians like Quentin Skinner and political theorists like Isaiah Berlin have long argued, understanding the moral universe in which historical actors operated is essential to meaningful evaluation. Presentism (an act of judging past figures only by present standards) hurts not just Shah—it might as well vilify the most moral compatriots of our generation, a few decades later.

Max Weber’s insights into charismatic authority help illuminate the problem further. Charisma can be historically productive. It can mobilise, unify and create political order where none existed. But charisma becomes dangerous when it escapes institutional containment and hardens into a cult. Shah was undeniably a charismatic leader, combining military prowess with a sophisticated understanding of geopolitics, which is evident from his military achievements and strategies alike. His central achievement, at least in the latter stages of his campaign, was not merely territorial expansion but the consolidation of a fragile polity situated between powerful neighbours, evident from his ‘yam between two boulders’ precept.

The trouble begins when charisma is retrospectively divinised. The Dibyopadesh, often treated as sacred scripture, was not divine revelation—it was political advice shaped by experience, contingency and the limitations of its time. Its later sanctification, especially during King Mahendra’s autocratic reign, transformed pragmatic counsel into immutable doctrine. In doing so, historical reflection gave way to political instrumentalisation. Yet stripping the Dibyopadesh of its divine aura does not render it insignificant. On the contrary, when read critically, it reflects the thinking of a ruler deeply engaged with questions of sovereignty, diplomacy and survival. To treat it as infallible is intellectually lazy, and to dismiss it entirely is equally careless.

Hannah Arendt warned against replacing judgement with moral reflex, noting that democratic decay often begins when thinking gives way to slogans, and Nadia Urbinati similarly cautions against plebiscitary habits, where emotional affirmation substitutes for deliberation. In such climates, leaders are either worshipped or erased, and history becomes theatre rather than inquiry. What distinguishes societies that mature politically from those that remain trapped in cycles of resentment and myth is not the absence of conflict but the quality of disagreement. Germany did not become a stable democracy by refusing to remember its historical figures. It did so by embedding power within institutions and confronting the past honestly. On the other hemisphere, South Africa similarly preserved Nelson Mandela’s legacy not by denying complexity but by resisting myth-making.

Nepal’s task is no different. Shah was neither a god nor a monster. He was a human ruler capable of strategic brilliance and moral excess. To deny his nation-building vision or his brutal methods is to misunderstand him, and by extension, ourselves. Just as reverence without criticism produces stagnation, criticism without proportion produces cynicism—and both weaken democratic culture. Prithvi Jayanti should therefore be neither an exercise in unquestioning veneration nor a ritual of denunciation. It should be an invitation to civic maturity—to praise greatness without sanctifying it, and to criticise wrongdoing without erasing achievement. Nations do not grow by choosing between their heroes and their conscience. They grow by learning to hold both at once.