In Nepal, a monarchy makes way for democracy

It was a surprising sight in a land grown accustomed to surprises: the king at the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz, driving himself and his queen through the crowded streets of Kathmandu.

It was a surprising sight in a land grown accustomed to surprises: the king at the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz, driving himself and his queen through the crowded streets of Kathmandu.

“He was in the front seat! In traffic!” said Krishna Chetri, a 56-year-old shop owner.

“Where’s the majesty?” he asked. “This is something I never would have believed.”

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In this Himalayan land, the Shah dynasty of kings reputed to be reincarnated Hindu gods is being pushed to possible extinction by the fallout from a decade-long communist rebellion and King Gyanendra’s own autocratic ways.

Nepal votes Thursday for an assembly that will rewrite its constitution, the latest effort to transform a troubled, near-medieval land into a modern democracy.

And the assembly’s first order of business: eliminating the monarchy.

“This king has done too much harm. He’s shown us that we don’t need kings,” said Krishna Prashad Sitaula, a Cabinet minister and a leader of the centrist Nepali Congress party who helped negotiate the peace deal with the rebels, known as the Maoists.

Not everyone is so sure.

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“This king lost the people’s favour,” said Ram Shresthra Prasad, a 42-year-old priest at the Pashupatinath Temple, the clamorous shrine to which Gyanendra drove last month.

But “this talk of a secular republic is ignorant,” he said. “Our kings created Nepal. They protect our Hindu religion. The kings are the symbol of Nepal.”

Yet in many demonstrative ways, Gyanendra’s 269-year-old Shah dynasty has reached the end of the line.