King Birendra is the only monarch in Nepal’s history with a democratic inclination. King Birendra inherited an autocratic Panchayat system when he ascended the throne in 1972. It was a legacy of his father, King Mahendra. So naturally it was not a compulsion for him to initiate reform in the autocratic system. Nevertheless, every time there was dissent, he was ever willing to accommodate and compromise.

In 1979, when student-organized protests in Kathmandu calling for the restoration of a multi-party system turned into a national agitation backed by the political parties, the king announced a referendum. Although the referendum is alleged to have been rigged against the multi party system, the king nonetheless reformed the autocratic Panchayat system. The reformed Panchayat system allowed direct election of the legislators and local body official by popular vote. Though the King maintained his absolute rule, this reform was a milestone in the process leading up to the eventual restoration of the multi party system in Nepal in 1990.

A much liked trait of King Birendra was his ever smiling and gracious face. His pleasing personality was best proved during the meeting between the King and the leaders of the People’s Movement 1990, that was demanding the restoration of the multi party system after a month of violence and bloodshed. The meeting was beamed into the TV screen of Nepalese homes on the night of 8th April 1990. People were astounded to see the smiling face of a monarch accommodating the leaders at negotiations to make him give up his absolute rule. It was later said that there were no negotiations. The king simply asked the leaders about their demands and agreed to the restoration of the multi-party system without much discussion and bargaining.

"His Majesty is gentle." Krishna Prasad Bhattarai had this reaction when he came out of the meeting that restored multi-party democracy in Nepal in 1990. Indeed the King was one of the most gentle and kind of Nepalese monarchs in recent history. "A smiling figure in sandals, ....not for the scheduled 10 minutes, but for two and a half hours, we were made to feel enormously welcome," wrote Tam Dalyell, who met the King as a part of the Inter-Parliamentary Union Visit to Nepal six years ago, in the Obituary section of the Britain’ Independent Newspaper. Sir John Stanley, Chairman of the Britain-Nepal parliamentary group and part of the visiting team asked the King about his views on the role of constitutional monarchy since he was peacefully deprived of power in 1990. "To practice harmony." When the team met the late Mr Manmohan Adhikari, he confirmed the respect for the King both as a man, and one who used his position to strive to promote harmony, writes Mr. Dalyell.

The demise of the democratic king didn’t have to be the demise of democratic values. As this article was being written, the author was aghast to know that the government had arrested a leading and respected journalist of Nepal from the largest daily newspaper Kantipur, Yubaraj Ghimire, along with his Managing Director and Director on charges of treason for publishing an article by a Maoist leader. Articles by the Maoist leader have been published frequently in the daily newspaper before. The article represented the personal opinion of the author and publishing it was merely a practice of the freedom of expression guaranteed by the constitution of Nepal. The government by trying to muzzle a respected and widely popular newspaper has sent a wrong signal.

The government’s repressive move will only serve to fuel suspicions that people still have about the tragedy and the anarchy that we witnessed immediately after the new King’s enthronement could again ensue. As the violence was subsiding and the anarchists were being gradually sidelined, the government’s move has aggravated the situation and it may very well flare up again. The government has to understand that rekindled anarchy in the streets of Kathmandu can have grave consequences and the government could very well become a casualty.

The period of time between June 1 to 14 (when the much-awaited Probe Committee Report was made public) remains that period in the history of Nepal when the most number of rumours and hearsay- hundreds, if not thousands - spawned and circulated. As they have been doing in the past, Nepali dajubhai and didi bahini believed the halla, inviting trouble and mental unrest not only for themselves but also for their near and dear ones.

Moreover, the stakeholders were not only within Nepal but came from around the globe, and basically they were from the Nepali Diaspora.

The hearsay and rumour ranged from the poisoning of Kathmandu’s drinking water reservoirs to the sudden infiltration of plainclothes Indian army personnel into Nepal, from the death of a top political leader by heart attack to an impending military coup. Unlike in the past, the stories were bizarre and too calamitious to be true and, most importantly, they were centered on the bizarre incident of June 1.

Stories - all of them hearsay and unverified - were not only circulating by telephone. They were circulating on the Internet: Countless e-mail messages were being drafted and forwarded to Nepalis living in various corners of the globe. Soon after the BBC and CNN broadcast the tragic news that fateful Friday night, media representatives from around the world started flying into this grief-stricken Hindu capital, where preparations were underway for the last rites of the late king and other royalty.

Rumours never ceased to circulate. Even when the funeral procession was being taken through the heart of the city, there was hearsay and rumour among the participants. If one were to count the rumours circulating during the critical juncture of Nepalese history, the total number (of most popular and widely circulated) would easily cross a hundred, if not a thousand.

While some rumour and hearsay may be fact-based, objective and to some extent true, they nevertheless remind one of the late poet Bhupi Sherchan, who wisely wrote these lines in his "Hallai hallako desh" a long time ago:

If one were to dig out the foundation
of each house here
Only hearsay rumours would be
heaped up there
That’s why this is a country of
hearsay and rumours
This is a country standing on hearsay
and rumours
This is a country founded on hearsay
and rumours
This is a country of hearsay and
rumours.

Apparently, fully intoxicated by the media attention he was attracting, he could not resist the temptation to deliver the English version of the report himself, failing to realize it was entirely useless; for the foreign journos present could not understand his pronunciation! He would have saved himself the embarrassment had he made someone else with a better command over the English language read it, or simply just distributed the English translation among the foreign reporters. Also his attempt at describing the map in a mixture of English and Nepali was quite confusing and chaotic.

He repeatedly fumbled and mumbled. Once he mentioned the name of King Birendra when he was actually trying to name Crown Prince Dipendra as the one who pulled the trigger. There was laughter from the benches of the Fourth Estate but this did not deter him; instead, he might have felt encouraged by his antics. And what a press conference! The press was not given any opportunity to ask questions. When a few did venture to press ahead with their intense queries, Ranabhat simply said that "everything is in the report"! If no questions were to be fielded on the occasion, why was the briefing session held at all? He could have just read his text on Nepal Television and Radio Nepal in a one-way communication.

Wasn’t there anyone with understandable English among the eighty-plus strong helping hands? If there weren’t, the services of someone else could have been availed of.

Furthermore, the weapons exhibition was overdone to the point of outrageousness. Proudly brandishing the guns on display as trophies, turn by turn, posing for photographs, he paid no heed to the solemnity of the occasion and the tragedy the very weapons symbolized. Pointing out a gun towards the press, he even had the cheek to say, "Shall I shoot!" His frequent fatuous grins-and remarks-only made matters worse.

As if that was not enough, the military fatigues in which the Crown Prince had carried out the shootings were shown piece by piece. It was a macabre sight and completely unnecessary. In the name of transparency or "holding back nothing," propriety was thrown to the winds. Every proud, self-respecting Nepali watching the live telecast of the conference must have squirmed with shame and rage.

Surely, Ranabhat’s antics might cost Nepal’s public image dear, what with videos and photographs of the press conference likely to be splashed in newspapers and screens the world over.

It looked like the next day would start with one of those usual Saturday mornings: late morning bed-tea, reading all the articles and supplements in the papers without even having to think about the daily timetable to be followed in order to reach the office on time. Little did we realize that this Saturday morning would be like no other: we would all be witness to a chapter in history and later in the day, bid tearful farewell to an era. Elders remembered the day he was born, their children recalled the day he was declared king and the time they lined the streets to greet him on the day of his coronation while my own generation remembers the gentle smile and nod that would follow at numerous functions that were aired on television. The entire society that had grown with him had a flashback of some kind as soon as news of the tragedy started sinking in. Many that day did not want to believe that he would, from that moment on, live only in their memories.

Many like myself never got the opportunity to meet him or to be lucky enough to tell others what he was like in person. Our memory is limited to the pictures we saw and the television footage that was aired. And yet, it was many like myself who lined the streets on his last journey with tearful eyes and folded hands for the final "namaste", who shaved their heads to grieve for the loss and found it difficult to talk about him in the past tense. When he departed for his heavenly abode, he had made a room for himself in every Nepali heart.

When people grieve for their colleagues, relatives, friends or bosses, it is obvious for a particular circle to miss the times they spent together agreeing or disagreeing or the quiet moments that were shared. A strong feeling of a void between the past and the future is very natural. However, when this grief and feeling of irreparable loss is felt by an entire nation for someone they might have never seen or met in real life, he would have earned the respect through things done during his lifetime.

If available statistical figures are to be relied upon, there are more than 150 privately run schools in the country which have grown weeds instead of roses since last year, and 30,000 secondary level schools (including private-boarding schools and public schools) and over 700 Higher Secondary Schools have started wilting in the last three days, before the results are announced later this year.

Educational statistics at a glance-from the five development region compiled by HMG, Ministry of Education and culture, Planning division, manpower and Statistics Department (1981), show that an astounding number of children aged 11 or 12 and below and numbering some 7,40,275 have been forced to stay at home and suffer along with the winds of national politics.

Turmoil and violence, death and pain-humanity continues to act more like savages than loving citizens of the world, and we seem to be making little progress toward that promised goal of free and quality education for all affirmed at the 1990’s World Summit for Children.

History tells us that hunger, want and misery have been vanquished through love and caring for one another and with that barriers to literacy are removed. Here’s a paradox: everyone talks of quality education, including the bandh organizers but when they speak of national politics, they spare none, including the children who can be usefully employed in raising the party flag against all things government.

Yesterday on our streets, we watched in dismay some hundred children holding out party flags against every bicycle and motorcycle plying the public road.

There was a time when students and youths, the building blocks of the nation competed with each other in education trying to climb to the top of the pyramid. Now, for many at least, it just seems as if the journey of life from day break to bed-time consists in holding out flags against the authorities and pulling down all that comes their way.

History tells us how a child can shape the destiny of a nation but much depends upon what forces drive him. When Adolf Hitler, the century’s greatest threat left school for the streets to live his unhappy childhood, Germany, a mighty empire, saw doom where millions were murdered under a single man. And we are watching in awe and disbelief, our archival falls apart before our eyes. Children holding out communist flags and plying the main road shouting "zindabad" instead of singing "twinkle twinkle little star" in their schools. The enormity of what is transpiring is difficult for a layman to grasp.

Clearly, a changing world demands a redefinition of old concepts. But when we look back to Britain during the Victorian era-the age of discovery and enlightenment, both education and small pox vaccines were made compulsory, the confidence and energy of our age is misused. Children are misused and exploited.

As we watched, regardless of their present condition, occupation, or age, the students taking a break from the schools, were smiling and conversing as they sat on a once-busy thoroughfare forgetful that they have a difficult task ahead-to complete their courses and unfinished home-work and re-writing their exams that have been either postponed or disturbed by the bandh. It sounds now like only a magic mantra could pull them through the exams.

The latest figure indicates that at least 43 percent of our population is functionally illiterate. No other accomplishment than eradication of this terrible handicap-illiteracy would bring prosperity to this nation. But most overlook this fact.

We are just about to hit our peak season for studies, and the schools are closed, offices are closed, roads are filled with children with their make-shift bats and balls.

The object of education is either forgotten or misunderstood and money, muscle power and politics come to dominate the once non-political and service oriented educational institutions. Today, they are reeling under every move in national politics.

Already there are statistical profiles showing the brutal disparity between countries, where progress of the nations are ranked according to their achievement in education and health care. The performance in our country is simply dismal. Who is to blame? Ourselves, national politics and parties.

However, the progress our country in the last decade has been remarkable. From a just 2 percent literacy rate during the reign of the Ranas to 57 percent after the dawn of democracy, the educational performance has been decisive. But the gains of fifty years, which had been achieved at the costs of much sufferings and untold hardship, would be wiped away in a day if schools and students are to suffer along with the national politics.