It's Bad to Be the King

By Alex Perry

Rohit Bhandari isn't a natural rebel. He has a good job as a technician in a Kathmandu medical laboratory and is the son of a bureaucrat and mid-level leader for Nepal's pro-monarchy Rashtriya Prajatantra Party. And yet Bhandari, 26, found himself in a mob of thousands last week demanding "King Gyanendra, leave the country, or we will kill you," part of a tide of violent protests ripping across the mountain kingdom. Bhandari isn't sure why he is risking his life, beyond an unformed belief in "freedom" and a burning sense that Gyanendra, Nepal's absolute monarch, is keeping his country in the dark ages. "Everybody feels Nepal is being left behind," he says, as a Royal Nepalese Army helicopter buzzes overhead. "This is the 21st century. We can't have a God King. It's impossible to resist this."

Nepal, a country of 25 million, used to have three centers of power--the King, the political parties and a rebel Maoist army holed up in the Himalayas. Now there's a fourth: an angry population that's fed up with the other three and determined to strip all power from a monarchy that has reigned for more than two centuries. For about two weeks, young Nepalese have clashed with police and soldiers along a ring road surrounding the city, hurling bricks, burning tires and dodging tear gas, baton charges and the occasional live round. After the country's political parties rejected the King's proposal to resolve the crisis, mobs marched within blocks of the King's palace and were fired on by police. At least a dozen people have died nationwide.

The target of the rage is King Gyanendra, who took on dictatorial power 15 months ago in a coup backed by the army. He vowed to crush the rebels and weed out corruption. Instead, he locked up thousands of politicians, human-rights activists and students, while doing little to stop the Maoists. Opposition parties, in a loose alliance with the rebels, called for national protests this month, and Nepalese of all persuasions responded. "We don't want a constitutional King or a ceremonial King," says Suwas Bhetal, 24, as he moved toward the palace on Sunday. "We want him to leave the country."

They may get their wish. Gyanendra's indifferent attitude toward the threats to his rule--H.M. KING GYANENDRA DOES NOT SEEK CHEAP POPULARITY, proclaims a billboard near the U.S. embassy--has fueled public anger even more. The King finally tried to mollify the masses last Friday, when he pledged to return power to the people and asked the political parties to nominate a Prime Minister. But the parties dismissed the King's offer and intensified their demand that he go. Even the King's associates believe his days are numbered. "He felt he had to take over, or we would all be Maoists by now," says a friend of the royal family. "But he miscalculated. He has no support."

The trouble is that no one knows who might replace him. Though the anti-King movement has wide support, many protesters are teenagers or twentysomething Nepalese men in Nirvana and Metallica T shirts who have no leader and few goals beyond throwing rocks. Cars, shops and the Hyatt Regency Hotel have all been attacked in the past weeks. Ken Ohashi, the World Bank's top official in Nepal, describes royal abdication as a "doomsday scenario. There is no mechanism in place to create a new government. There's no parliament. There's no one to issue orders to the army. The Maoists could walk into Kathmandu by default." At the very least, says the friend of the royals, "autocracy would switch to anarchy."

Out on the streets, even the demonstrators express reservations about life without a monarch. "No one has a clear road map for what might happen after the King," says Ravi Shah, 26, an administrator with a youth charity. "We've had a system of Kings for 237 years. Is it possible to just throw them out?" Bhandari nods in agreement. He says whatever the King's faults, the older generation still reveres him as an incarnation of Vishnu, a symbol of national unity. "The reality is that all the plans for the future are vague," says Bhandari. "Everyone has democracy, freedom and human rights in their hearts. And we know none of that is possible under an autocratic regime. But a life without the King? We're shouting for it. But I'm not sure we can imagine it." Now would be a good time to start.

With reporting by Aravind Adiga/Kathmandu