COVER STORY

Trapped in tradition

RITA MANCHANDA

IN the tributes being paid to the royal family through the newspapers and at impromptu shrines at street corners in Kathmandu, the photographs displayed bear the images of King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, Crown Prince Dipendra, Prince Niranjan and Princess Shruti. Eventually will they airbrush Dipendra's image out of the royal archives and memorabilia?

In the annals of royalty, parricide and regicide are not the heinous crimes they would be if commoners committed them. But these are modern times. And, ostensibly, there was no power tussle - the Crown Prince stood to inherit the throne.

So what went wrong? The why must be answered if people are to believe and the conspiracy theories are laid to rest. And so has begun in Kathmandu, a psycho-sociological profiling of a personality that could on June 1 gun down the royal family - that is nine members of his own family and then himself. Suddenly, the image of the gentle, smiling and well-behaved Crown Prince begins to crack. Had the mystique of royalty or rather the Palace covered up his violent character traits? By contrast, his cousin Prince Paras was notorious - but then he was not Crown Prince.

BINOD JOSHI/ AP
Prince Paras Shah.

Both physically and metaphorically, Nepal's royalty has been in-grown. In-breeding and closed social mixing has been the practice. The royals marry first cousins. King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya were second cousins, the great-grandson and the great-granddaughter of Prime Minister Yudh Shamsher Rana. The circle is a closed one of relatives and more relatives of entrapped royalty. Nepal's monarchy has been denuded of real power but members of the royalty retain the trappings of royal privileges and mystique, which place them above accountability. It is a world where a lowly aide would not think of questioning the Crown Prince if he saw him in full battle dress as on the fateful night of June 1 or when it comes to supplying him drugs for over a period of one year.

The Crown Prince, like his father, went to Eton from where he went on to do a doctorate in Geography at Tribhuvan University. Hushed up was the fact that as a student "Dippy" had to be removed because of repeated drunkenness and rowdiness. The British tabloid, the Sun had gone to town on the Nepali royal but the Palace made sure that Nepalis did not come to know of it. Now the stories are tumbling out - real or fictive - of drunken brawls and murderous rages and violent quarrels with mother, father and the rest of the family.

BINOD JOSHI/ AP
Dipendra.

Also emerging is the Crown Prince's fear of the domineering Queen. Once as a teenager on a picnic with friends he stopped by the family's favourite retreat where the Queen had established a poultry farm. He took away a few chickens for roasting, and fearing his mother's displeasure asked the coop-keeper to lie that the chickens had died. His school friends recall how as a child he drew pictures of his mother as an ogress. More recently, friends had seen him explode with frustrated anger and threaten to murder everyone. A profile is being drawn of a frustrated man trapped in royalty. Between father and son there were quarrels over the former's reluctance to play a proactive role as the king. Moreover, come June 27, Dipendra would be 30 and unmarried. For seven years he had been involved with Devyani Rana, the daughter of Pashupati Shamsher Rana. And the whole family was bitterly opposed to any marriage (except Prince Paras. Was that why he was spared?). It was not so much that the Queen held her to be a "C" grade Rana because her great-grandmother had been the mistress of the King, but that she represented all that the conservative Palace was not. She was vivacious, extrovert, sophisticated - indeed much like her aunt the "Maharani of Gwalior". The family wanted the Crown Prince to marry the much less flamboyant and reserved Supriya Shah, his childhood girlfriend and the daughter of the Queen's ADC. He could keep Devyani as his mistress.

What brought things to a head? Was it that his younger brother Prince Niranjan was about to announce his marriage plans, come his next birthday? Was it that the King gave Dipendra an ultimatum that he announce his marriage to Supriya on his birthday or give up claims to the throne? Devyani Rana might know, but she is not telling - "It's a personal matter," she told Nepal's Ambassador in Delhi. Dipendra spoke to her several times on his mobile phone before the massacre. Did she threaten him? Add to that the deadly cocktail of liquor, drugs and guns. The Crown Prince's obsession with guns was well known. The Palace had a practice range and the armoury was full of guns from the army. To see the Crown Prince armed to the teeth was not so unusual - he was wont to take off at night shooting - mostly cats, it is said.

Did he do it? Why did he do it? These questions will continue to haunt the public. But in the weeks ahead it is expected that there will be some sober introspection on modernising Nepal's constitutional monarchy and not only its security. What kind of King of the Nepali people would Dipendra have made - a man capable of regicide? Already there is much apprehension about Prince Paras. But beyond individual anomalies, the problem is inherent in the system of royalty in Nepal.