The National Museum

The National Museum located on the way to Swayambhunath Hill is most popular among the Kathmandu people. It holds not only ancient artifacts, but also interesting mementos of recent kings and recently used firearms. A visitor to the museum will understand much about the way wars were fought in this part of the world and the type of firearms that were used to conquer Nepal and later to protect it from the British Raj. Other artifacts include ancient statues, paintings, and murals. You may be interested in the doll collection as well as the stuffed animals there. The collection of coins in the complex includes coins going back to the second century BC as well as excellent samples from dynasties that ruled Nepal after the birth of Christ.

Timings:
From 10:30 am to 3 pm, except on Tuesdays and govt. holidays.
From 10:30 am to 2 pm, on Fridays.

Who killed the royal family of Nepal?

There is something not quite right in the agency reports regarding the mysterious deaths of the royal family of Nepal. First, there is the curious story that the crown prince, Dipendra, having massacred his entire family, then tried to kill himself. He might have succeeded, except he contrived to shoot himself in the back of the head. This appears rather difficult to do, especially with an assault rifle. So then who shot him? And the latest story is that an Uzi assault rifle "exploded". Very strange, that an explosion should have precisely targeted all these people.
Second, there was the immediate certificate of non- involvement given to China by that self-proclaimed expert on the affairs of the Indian subcontinent, Barbara Crossette of The New York Times, thanks to reader Sanjai who pointed this out to me. The Hindu newspaper, despite its name a left-wing paper, said the same thing: that the "so-called" Maoists had nothing to do with this, thanks to reader Suresh. Said Crossette:
"More recently, as democratically elected governments of left and right run by a few upper-caste families with little grassroots contact have stumbled, a powerful radical leftist movement, usually described as Maoist but not thought to be backed by China, has been on the march in the Nepalese countryside. The rebels [are] gradually encircling Kathmandu and severely damaging its economically important tourist industry."
Methinks the woman [and The Hindu too] doth protest too much. Did anybody accuse China yet? But here is Crossette, a consistent China-lover, instantly asserting that China was not at fault: suspicious, isn't it? And this is China's modus operandi -- stoke Maoist insurgencies as part of its missionary activity. Indonesia some time ago, Sri Lankan too, and ongoing activities in India. These are all part of the general empire-building tactics intended to result in the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, the only catch being that all the prosperity will belong to China.
A Maoist insurrection right next door to occupied Tibet, just like the insurrections in India's Nagaland, Myanmar, etc -- the Chinese have nothing to do with these either, so horrified they would be at the suggestion, innocent and peace-loving as they are!
Wait, there's more: it is not China, it's India behind this outrage. Actually it's those darn Hindus; note the casual mention of caste in the above. As if the hoi polloi proletariat are running things in America: WASP elite do. Says Crossette:
"Underlying all the other tensions, the Nepalese continue to nurse a long-held fear that neighboring India may be behind the country's political problems. Leaders of Nepal's Congress Party, which was once banned but returned to political leadership a decade ago at the vanguard of the democracy movement, have acknowledged that they had considerable Indian support.
"India, which blockaded landlocked Nepal a decade ago to punish it for buying weapons from the Chinese, has again recently accused Nepal of growing too close to China and also of allowing Pakistani agents to operate from its territory."
Ah, a mere accusation regarding Pakistani agents. A Pakistani embassy official was caught with incriminating evidence about his involvement in the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight that ended up in Kandahar. No, facts do not deter Crossette. One of these days I wish someone would explain to me why the NY Times keeps her on their staff.
So it's all India's fault. (Why isn't this the Sonia Gandhi Congress Party's fault? After all they were the ones who did all this.) Anyone remember Crossette's gem a few months ago where she explained that you see, true democracy is practised not in India, but in Pakistan and China? I wonder, is this woman related to Katherine Mayo, infamous author of that "gutter-inspector's report", Mother India? Why are some white women so anti- India? Like that Robin Raphel? I do have theories, but that's for another day.
Further, says Crossette, omniscient as usual (yes, she did write a book on the Himalayan kingdoms, which I suspect is as banal and meaningless as her book on India), goes on to implicitly suggest that Queen Aishwarya was a bad person whose death was no loss:
"Nepal, the world's only Hindu kingdom, experienced a huge political upheaval in 1990, when a democracy movement threatened the future of the monarchy, but stopped short of forcing the abdication of the king, who was widely accepted by the Nepalese to be a reincarnation of the god Vishnu. Nepal then accepted King Birendra as a constitutional monarch. But there was always far less sympathy for the queen, and the king withdrew significantly from public life after that...
The British Broadcasting Corporation's correspondent for South Asia reported from Kathmandu, the capital, that the crown prince had quarrelled with his mother over his choice of a bride. Queen Aishwarya had long been associated in the minds of Nepal's democrats with a rigid, outdated penchant for absolute monarchy and social conservatism. Dipendra had made efforts to appear more open to the Nepalese people."
Yes, wicked queen, indeed: off with her head. How dare she have an opinion on her son's wife-to-be? I wonder what Crossette thought of the British queen's opinion of her daughter-in-law Princess Diana -- was she entitled to one?
And more on what a terrible person King Birendra was:
"Birendra inherited from his father a system of partyless rule through rubber-stamp local and regional councils known as panchayats. The system afforded only the barest facade of democracy and was a constant irritant to the people of Nepal, who saw in it not only unbridled royal privilege but also the source of corruption and the abuse of political power by royal favorites who had no interest in the development of this mountainous country, still one of the poorest in the world."
Yes, good thing the king was killed: let us bring on egalitarian Maoist rule, as in Tibet!
The overthrow and murder of a royal dynasty is standard practice for Marxists: witness what happened in Russia. (The Hindu was magisterial about this issue: there is no comparison between the royal massacres in Russia and Nepal, they declared. Really? And why is that?) So why not do this in Nepal too, to put even more pressure on India, as part of the continuing Chinese encirclement of India?
The first response to the Indian warming up to the US was the lease for the port of Gwadar in Pakistan, with the intent of also building roads to link it to the Karakoram Highway across Pakistani-occupied Kashmir.
When the dust settles, I suspect we will find that poor King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, and most of their family were massacred not because of their son's love-life or what an astrologer said, but simply and cold-bloodedly as part of the Sino-Islamic attack on Hindu civilization. There are Judases everywhere who will betray their own to the enemy. It is a bloody coup d'etat, and this is the second Chinese response to India's support for US positions. Didn't Chinese strongman Zhu Rongji just visit Nepal two weeks ago? And The Hindustan Times suggests that the new regent, Gyanendra, is close to the Pakistanis.
I have noticed that Marxists kill Hindus with no compunctions: for instance this has been going on in Kerala's Kannur district for some time. Every person killed by the Marxists there is a Hindu, and that is of course not news. But when they started killing Muslims, this became big news; there was outrage in the 'secular' media. Naturally, the Christian-Muslim-Marxist alliance to destroy Hindu civilization has to be preserved at all costs!
I remember reading somewhere recently that there are also massive conversion activities going on in Nepal by both Pakistan and the Christians. And so the war goes on, for the total annihilation of the only civilization that has withstood the thrust of the Semites for all these centuries.

Narayanhity Palace Museum

The Narayanhity Palace Museum, or Narayanhity Durbar(formerly Narayanhity Royal Palace), is a palace in Nepal which long served as a primary residence for the country's monarchs.[1] The original palace was constructed under order of the Shah dynasty in the 18th century and destroyed in an earthquake in 1934. It was rebuilt in a contemporary style in the 1960s on the design of Architect Benjamin Polk(Chatterjee & Polk). On 1 June 2001, the palace was the site of the Nepalese royal massacre, where King Birendra of Nepal and Queen Aiswarya were shot dead along with seven other members of the Royal Family

Narayanhity Museum
The historical palace was turned into a public museum immediately after the country was declared a republic. It is open to national and international visitors on weekdays. The very valuable Throne and the Crown are not yet on public display due to security reasons.

The Narayanhity Royal Palace, former home of the Royal Family. Following the abdication of the king and the founding of a republic, the building and its grounds have been turned into a museum.
Location Narayanhity Royal Palace, Kathmandu, Nepal
Date June 1, 2001
about 21 hrs (UTC+5:45)
Target The Nepalese Royal Family
King Birendra of Nepal
Attack type Fratricide, patricide,
sororicide, regicide,
matricide, avunculicide,
mass murder, murder-suicide,massacre
Death(s) 10 (including the perpetrator)
Injured 5
Belligerent(s) Crown Prince Dipendra Bir bikram shah

Nepalese royal massacre

The Nepalese royal massacre occurred on Friday, June 1, 2001, at a house in the grounds of the Narayanhity Royal Palace, then the residence of the Nepalese monarchy, when Crown Prince Dipendra shot and killed several members of his family. As a result of the shooting, ten people died and five were wounded. The dead included King Birendra of Nepal and Queen Aiswarya, Dipendra's father and mother. Prince Dipendra became de jure King of Nepal upon his father's death and died whilst in a coma three days after the act.

Kingdom of Nepal

Gorkha rule

The old king's palace on a hill in GorkhaAfter decades of rivalry between the medieval kingdoms, modern Nepal was created in the latter half of the 18th century, when Prithvi Narayan Shah, the ruler of the small principality of Gorkha, formed a unified country from a number of independent hill states. Prithvi Narayan Shah dedicated himself at an early age to the conquest of the Kathmandu Valley and the creation of a single state, which he achieved in 1768.

The country was frequently called the Gorkha Kingdom. It is a misconception that the Gurkhas took their name from the Gorkha region of Nepal. The region was given its name after the Gurkhas had established their control of these areas. The Gurkha, also spelled Gorkha, are people from Nepal who take their name from the legendary eighth-century Hindu warrior-saint Guru Gorakhnath. Gurkhas claim descent from the Hindu Rajputs and Brahmins of Northern India, who entered modern Nepal from the west.

After Shah's death, the Shah dynasty began to expand their kingdom into what is present day North India. Between 1788 and 1791, Nepal invaded Tibet and robbed Tashilhunpo Monastery of Shigatse. Alarmed, the Chinese emperor Qianlong appointed Fu Kangan commander-in-chief of the Tibetan campaign and Fu not only defeated the Gurkha army but also conquered Tibet. The Gurkhas were forced to accept surrender on China terms.

After 1800, the heirs of Prithvi Narayan Shah proved unable to maintain firm political control over Nepal. A period of internal turmoil followed.

Rivalry between Nepal and the British East India Company - over the princely states bordering Nepal and India - eventually led to the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814–16), in which Nepal suffered a complete rout. The Treaty of Sugauli was signed in 1816, ceding large parts of the Nepali territories of Terrai and Sikkim, (nearly one third of the country), to the British, in exchange for Nepalese autonomy.

As the ceded territories were not restored to Nepal by the British when freedom was granted to the people of British India, these have become a part of the Republic of India (see Greater Nepal) even though it was mentioned that the treaties on behalf of the East India Company or British India would not be valid anymore. The Kingdom of Sikkim, which had already lost its Darjeeling region to British India in 1853, was annexed by the post-colonial Republic of India in April 1975 and, in the following month, Sikkim's people voted to join the Indian Union.

Royal coup by King Mahendra Declaring parliamentary democracy a failure, King Mahendra carried out a royal coup 18 months later, in 1960. He dismissed the elected Koirala government, declared that a "partyless" panchayat system would govern Nepal, and promulgated another new constitution on December 16, 1960.

Subsequently, the elected Prime Minister, Members of Parliament and hundreds of democratic activists were arrested. (In fact, this trend of arrest of political activists and democratic supporters continued for the entire 30 year period of partyless Panchayati System under King Mahendra and then his son, King Birendra).

The new constitution established a "partyless" system of panchayats (councils) which King Mahendra considered to be a democratic form of government, closer to Nepalese traditions. As a pyramidal structure, progressing from village assemblies to a Rastriya Panchayat (National Parliament), the panchayat system constitutionalised the absolute power of the monarchy and kept the King as head of state with sole authority over all governmental institutions, including the Cabinet (Council of Ministers) and the Parliament. One-state-one-language became the national policy in an effort to carry out state unification, uniting various ethnic and regional groups into a singular nepali nationalist bond.

King Mahendra was succeeded by his 27 year-old son, King Birendra, in 1972. Amid student demonstrations and anti-regime activities in 1979, King Birendra called for a national referendum to decide on the nature of Nepal's government: either the continuation of the panchayat system with democratic reforms or the establishment of a multiparty system. The referendum was held in May 1980, and the panchayat system won a narrow victory. The king carried out the promised reforms, including selection of the prime minister by the Rastriya Panchayat.

People in rural areas had expected that their interests would be better represented after the adoption of parliamentary democracy in 1990. The Nepali Congress with support of "Alliance of leftist parties" decided to launch a decisive agitational movement, Jana Andolan, which forced the monarchy to accept constitutional reforms and to establish a multiparty parliament. In May 1991, Nepal held its first parliamentary elections in nearly 50 years. The Nepali Congress won 110 of the 205 seats and formed the first elected government in 32 years.

[edit] 20th century
In 1923 Britain and Nepal formally signed an agreement of friendship, in which Nepal and India (which was under British Rule at that time) negotiated and ended up exchanging some cities.

Slavery was abolished in Nepal in 1924.

History of Nepal

The history of Nepal (नेपालको इतिहास) is characterized by its isolated position in the Himalayas and its two dominant neighbors, India and China.

Due to the arrival of disparate settler groups from outside through the ages, it is now a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual country. Its population is predominantly Hindu with significant presence of Buddhists, who were in majority at one time in the past. Nepal was split in three kingdoms from the 15th to 18th century, when it was unified under a monarchy. The national language of Nepal is called 'Nepali', a name given - long after unification of Nepal - to the language called Khas Kura.

Nepal experienced a failed struggle for democracy in the 20th century. During the 1990s and until 2008, the country was in civil strife. A peace treaty was signed in 2008 and elections were held in the same year.

Many of the ills of Nepal have been blamed on the royal family of Nepal. In a historical vote for the election of the constituent assembly, Nepalis voted to oust the monarchy in Nepal. In June 2008, Nepalis ousted the royal household. Nepal was formally renamed the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal when it became a federal republic.