 |
Kathmandu Saturday February 02, 2002 Magh 20, 2058.
|
A royal palace looks to regain lost glory
Razen Manandhar
LALITPUR, Feb 1 A major palace in the UNESCO World Heritage
Zone of Patan Durbar Square, built over two centuries ago, now belongs to a
school-cum-campus which uses it as a dumping house for furniture. It also houses a filthy
cafeteria.
Bahadur Shah, the youngest son of King Prithvi Narayan Shah,
built the palace for his residence after the Nepal-China War of 1792 AD.
But the palace may yet be rescued as the Executive Committee
members of the Bahadur Shah Memorial Academy on Friday inspected the palace and met the
school administration.
Adarsha Kanya Niketan High School obtained the palace in
1951, in the early stage of the education movement in Nepal when ancient palaces and
monasteries were the main choices of educators to run a school.
The school has now new buildings at the backyard. And the
main palace building houses a tea shop and the school administration office on the first
floor, a kitchen on the second floor, the third floor is used by student scouts for
occasional meetings, while the fourth floor is a seminar hall which is also used as a
library.
The palace with three-feet wide bricks and mud-mortar walls,
also has inbuilt earthquake-proof mechanisms based on traditional technology.
But the palace is now in a state of decay, with its spacious
wooden verandah full of broken furniture.
"This palace is the only reminder of the great regent
Bahadur Shah, who did not wear the crown but expanded Nepal much more than King Prithvi
Narayan Shah himself," says Dr Bhadra Ratna Bajracharya who holds a doctorate on the
late regent and his times.
Making an urgent plea to conserve the once-palace as a
national monument, Dr Bajracharya says it used to be the place where the regent spent his
life after retirement.
Prof. Mukunda Raj Aryal, the Chief of Central Department of
Culture and the Vice-President of Nepal Heritage Site, says that the palace is an
archaeological site and should be brought back under state ownership for its permanent
conservation and proper utility.
Chief of Patan Museum, Jal Krishna Shrestha, says that since
the Bahadur Shah Palace was an integral part of the Patan Palace which is also a World
Heritage Zone, the school must hand it over to the state as the school management does not
seem to have any "feeling for conservation".
"No school should possess such monuments which in fact
is an emblem and property of the nation itself. The government should take it back and
take measures to conserve it in time," says Shrestha.
The Department of Archaelology (DOA) did make attempts to
conserve the palace with German assistance of around Rs 2.3 million in 1996-98, but the
ownership was still with the school.
Chief of World Heritage Section at DOA, Bhim Nepal, says the
Section has not taken any step to possess the palace.
Chairman of the Bahadur Shah Memorial Academy Diwakar Bikram
Shah, a descendant of Bahadur Shah himself, says that the palace should be returned to the
state and conserved as a museum where the regent’s activities could be displayed.
"Bahadur Shah accomplished two-third of the total
unification process of Nepal, so he must be regarded as a national hero and his residence
a national monument," he says.
But the school administration is just not ready to leave the
"building" it got half a century ago.
"Many have come to claim ‘our’ building. But
nobody can take it back from the school at any cost," says Nanda Govinda Rajkarnikar,
the chief of Adarsha Kanya Campus, who also worked as a headmaster of the school for 16
years.
Other Stories
|
