Narayanhiti knowledge

Narayanhiti Royal Palace, that locus of Nepali state power for centuries and an abode of crowned heads until 2008, will tell you its story in fragments leaving many of your historical curiosities unanswered if you visit its modern form – Narayanhiti Palace Museum. Your searching gaze to explore an edifice from which the Narayanhiti gains its currency in Nepali politics will be thwarted. History has it that Narayanhiti Palace has its genesis in Kot Massacre of 1846. After the massacre, all properties and land of the then chief of the army, Shivaram Singh Basnyat, and his sons are said to have been usurped by the Ranas. Narayanhiti is a product of this usurpation.

Today’s palace museum has eclipsed many of these historical facts. So you will not get to see the first private palace built in this land for the second Rana prime minister, Ranodip Singh Rana, where he lived and in which he was assassinated by his nephews in 1885. You will not get to see the palace that Bir Shamsher erected to place his son-in-law and king, Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah. You will not know whether these edifices collapsed with time or are inaccessible for public audience. You will only see the foundation bricks and outlines of Tribhuvan Sadan (it had been dismantled after the massacre) where the then king, Birendra, and other royalties had been exterminated in the gory massacre of 2001.

However, there is liberty for the public to attempt visits, glean royal secrets and interpret them. Hundreds of people queue up for buying tickets braving rain and shine just to have a glimpse of royal life. Inside, inscriptions, settings and grandeurs of this erstwhile palace serve as an open book for visitors. Narayanhiti is a mini Nepal. There are as many as 75 rooms in the palace (this is what an attendant told me, official brochure says there are 52 but only 19 rooms are open for public viewing). Major entrances are named after the mountains of the country. Meeting rooms and halls are named after Nepal’s administrative districts.

If dysfunctional monarchy, I reckoned, gave way for the birth of republic, why cannot growing dissent and dissatisfaction of the current political farce give way for reviving the institution?

So the palace contains the whole of Nepal inside. King Mahendra, who masterminded the present day royal palace in the 1960s, named these rooms so, for he was the one to divide this country into 75 districts and 14 zones. He named them so apparently for his love for the country (or was it to lock up and hold the country hostage under monarchy for years?). An attendant offered a different version of the story. According to him, the king so named them so that the royal servants would not be confused in distinguishing one room from another (most rooms are identical) in this mazelike palace.

Mahendra must have wanted to feel and see the whole of his country inside the palace. And his successors followed suit. Perhaps, this was the most fatal weakness and illusion that royalties lived with. Moving from one room to another, symbolically from one district to another, thus traveling the whole of Nepal inside the palace without really knowing the state-of-affairs in those districts. Thinking of the country’s districts in terms of the regal appearance of the palace. The purposes for which these rooms were used speak of another dimension. Corridors from Rolpa to Baitadi, the region of Nepal where most of the ills linger, display the pictures of the foreign dignitaries including the heads of the states who stayed in the palace during their sojourn here. The room Rolpa served as a place for the visiting head of the state to have meeting with the dignitaries.

Rukum was a waiting hall for the VIPs seeking audience with the visiting head of the state. Dailekh is the bedroom for the visiting head of the state. Achham was the bedroom for the other family members of the visiting head of the state. Bajura was the dining hall for the visiting head of the state. Jumla was where foreign visitors took rest before and after the meal. And Gorkha was a hall used for the decoration ceremony of the members of the royal family and the ceremony to announce the crown prince. The constitution of Nepal 1990 was proclaimed by King Birendra from this room. Observing these rooms inside, one might get the impression that Nepal is the most prosperous country in the world.

Visitors react with varied responses to these regalia and wonders of the palace. Obviously, most are awed at coming face-to-face with the mansion that they would only hear of in fairy tales. They will not say anything but take long breaths. Others fearlessly blame Gyanendra Shah for the end of monarchy and hold him for masterminding the royal carnage. And the others are sympathetic toward him. “He must have been heartbroken to leave this palace. He will come back to this place. He will claim his royalty. He will be restored,” a middle-aged man was seeking my reciprocity as I was scribbling information in my diary.

You can overlook these remarks as infantile wish for a moment. But a careful observation of the halls will partly explain to you why the nation saw a decade-long insurgency for the abolition of monarchy. While the whole of the mid-west and far-west was reeling under bloody insurgency, the royals and the king kept basking in the cozy comforts of the palace in the rooms named after those very districts for banquets, audience, and luxury. While royalties were living with this delusion that all was right in the country, Maoist rebellion began and spread like wildfire across the nation.

Narayanhiti has inspired several creativities, critiques and introspections. It deserves them. For me, it served as a guide to understanding why the monarchy suffered a terrible fall in this country. While inside the museum, I reflected upon the new system (republic) that came to replace and claim its superiority and supremacy over the old (monarchy). I attempted some comparison. The new is becoming as bad as the old. I remembered the recent drive of the former monarch at consolidating public sympathy for him by invoking Hindu ideology. I remembered the pleas of the loyalists to go for referendum to fix up the monarchy business. If dysfunctional monarchy, I reckoned, gave way for the birth of republic, why cannot growing dissent and dissatisfaction of the current political farce give way for reviving the institution? Given the continuing political mess and stupidity of the political actors, how can one brush off the prospect of revival of monarchy just as an imagination?

Source: http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=21958