Nepal's Royal Deaths Give Life to Swirl of Theories - The New York Times 7/21/21, 11:41 AM

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life-to-swirl-of-theories.html

Nepal's Royal Deaths Give Life to Swirl of

Theories

By John F. Burns

July 19, 2001

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For ordinary Nepalese, there has been little healing in the weeks since thin gray
smoke spiraled into the sky from the cremation of this mountain kingdom's
murdered king, queen and seven other members of the royal family.

Still, from dawn to dusk each day, knots of ordinary people go to Katmandu's
most revered Hindu temple, stare down at the cremation site, speculate numbly
about the royal deaths and seek hidden truths that might assuage, or at least
better explain, their loss.
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Though eyewitnesses described a drunken, drugged crown prince in a frenzy

over a frustrated love affair, shooting his family on the night of June 1, then
killing himself, a sequence of bungling, lies and revisions in official accounts has
spawned conspiracy theories that many Nepalese fear may never relent.

On one recent morning, Keshav Gajurel, retired from a government-owned

knitting mill, was at the temple for the funeral rites of his brother Netra. Mr.
Gajurel, 63, took time from his vigil to voice his fury at the country's rulers and
the way they handled the explanation of the royal killings.

Much anger focuses on the new monarch, 53-year-old King Gyanendra, who
succeeded to the crown of his older brother, the slain King Birendra, when
Birendra's two sons -- Crown Prince Dipendra, 29, identified as the killer, and
Prince Nirajan, his younger brother -- died in the blood bath. It was Gyanendra's
fortune -- and curse -- to be away from the palace on the fateful night, since he
escaped the massacre, only to become a villain among the conspiracy theorists.

''If the prime minister says he's not exactly sure what happened, and the chief of
the army staff says the same, how can any ordinary man know?'' Mr. Gajurel
asked, brushing his hand through his salt-and-pepper crew cut. ''First, we were
told that the killer was Dipendra; after that, we had Gyanendra saying it was
only 'an accident.' Then they went back to the first story again.''

The confusion over the royal killings would be bad enough for any society
centered, as Nepal's has been for centuries, on reverence for a monarchy. But
matters have been made much worse here by the presence in the Himalayan
hinterland of a powerful Maoist rebel movement, conducting a ''people's war''
with the intent of sweeping away the monarchy and establishing a Communist
system modeled on the China fashioned by Mao Zedong after 1949.

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Many things stand against the Maoists: the conservatism of Nepal's 23 million
people, and Nepal's geographical position, sandwiched between China and India,
which both need Nepal as a stable buffer state. China and the rebels are not, in
any case, on friendly terms, the rebels having rejected the current Beijing
government as ''revisionist'' and having been disavowed in turn by China's
leaders, who have told Nepalese leaders that they have given the rebels no
support.

But nobody doubts the palace massacre helped the rebels.

Before the royal killings, the rebels already controlled at least 7 of Nepal's 75
districts, mostly in the poverty-stricken Himalayan hinterland, and had decisive
influence in perhaps 15 or 20 others. The speed with which they were moving
into other districts, drawing new recruits to their guerrilla force of about 4,000
men and women, and building a pervasive underground in Katmandu, had made
many Nepalese suspect the old system of government, long weakened by
indolence and corruption, could simply topple.

But for now, the old order reigns -- in Katmandu, at least. The red-and-blue
Nepalese flag flies full staff again at Naranyahiti Palace, site of the massacre and
Parliament is back in session -- as well as back to its languid, faction-ridden
ways. Senior ministers, grown-out crew cuts testimony to ritual head shaving
among Hindus following the palace killings, greet visitors and say, for the record,
that things are back to normal. But their anxious smiles say otherwise, as do
their off-the-record asides.

One senior minister led a visitor into his office, still displaying portraits of the
murdered king and queen, and painted a grim picture. Any hope of resisting the
Maoists, he said, rested with a decision to go beyond police action, treating the
insurgency as an emergency to be confronted directly by Nepal's 40,000-man

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army. Under King Birendra, wary of reaching a crucial watershed on the path to
civil war, the army was deployed only to protect road crews and others working
on rural government development programs, under orders to stick strictly to
defensive actions.

King Gyanendra, a wealthy businessman before the massacre, dogged by

questions about the integrity of some of his dealings and accused by some of
black market activities, is thought by many Nepalese to be more susceptible to
deploying the army in an offensive role against the rebels.

Though dressed and trained in the tradition of the Nepal-born Gurkha soldiers in
the British and Indian Armies who earned a reputation for steely courage in two
world wars, the Nepalese Army has a budget of barely $55 million a year, and
little of the equipment, including helicopters, needed to carry the fight into the
mountains.

But still more striking was the minister's suggestion that no military action
would be of much avail without a wholesale change in the political culture.

After the shock of Crown Prince Dipendra's role in the killings, the focus has
shifted to King Gyanendra's 30-year-old son, Prince Paras. Katmandu is rife with
stories of the prince's careening through narrow streets in a Japanese four-
wheel-drive luxury vehicle, injuring or killing several people -- and remaining
immune to prosecution. The most serious case, confirmed by two government
ministers and by an ambassador with access to a Western intelligence report,
resulted in the death of a popular sitar player last fall.

According to these accounts, Prince Paras became embroiled in an altercation

over a waitress at a nightclub attached to a hotel in which his father is a major
shareholder. The sitar player, Pravid Gurung, joined other employees in
demanding that the prince leave the waitress alone. When Mr. Gurung left the
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nightclub, he was pursued and knocked off his motorcycle by Prince Paras, who
then put his vehicle in reverse and ran over Mr. Gurung before driving off. Later,
600,000 Nepalese signed a petition to King Birendra demanding action against
the prince, but Paras was never touched.

Now, Prince Paras is next in line to the throne. His father, King Gyanendra,
apparently wary of provoking popular feeling, has so far avoided naming him
formally as crown prince. When Parliament was re-convened a month after the
palace killings, Prince Paras was notably absent. At the Katmandu nightspots he
frequented before the massacre, he has been a no-show as well.

With these and other gestures of restraint, King Gyanendra has seemed
sensitive to the public mood. In his maiden speech to Parliament, he held out an
olive branch to the Maoists, saying that ''individuals involved in violent acts
shall be encouraged to abandon the path of violence and join the national
mainstream of political participation.''

This encouraged Nepalese who have placed their faith in a series of clandestine
negotiations between the government and the Maoists, but seemed to cut little
ice with the rebels. Within a week, they resumed their attacks on outlying
government posts, killing 38 police officers in one day. In April, similar attacks
killed 80 police officers, prompting scores of others to desert.

Few Nepalese believe the Maoists could win a civil war. Equally, there are few
who think the monarchy and government can rebuild support without far-
reaching reforms.

''What we have learned in the past few weeks is that Nepal is not the mountain
paradise our tourism promoters always wanted people to believe it was,'' said
Padna Ratna Tuladhar, a human rights activist who has been a go-between in
government and rebel contacts.
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''We know now that we had a crown prince who was a drinker and a drug user,
that we have a new king who was a smuggler, that his son is a killer, and that we
have a government that is so corrupt that it is incapable of effective action.

''But we also know that the people of Nepal want their rulers to do everything
possible to avoid a war. What they expect is that everybody, including the king,
the government and the Maoists, put the massacre behind them and do
whatever is necessary to bring Nepal to peace.''

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 3 of the National edition with the headline: Nepal's Royal Deaths Give Life to Swirl
of Theories

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