KATHMANDU: Dozens of framed photographs of Nepal’s bitterly resented monarch and his wife lie stacked against the walls of his shop and Rajendra Shrestha is not hopeful of selling them.
Since the beginning of 19 days of protests in April against King Gyanendra’s absolute rule that left at least 15 people dead, sales of the monarch’s pictures have slumped.
The actress prints, the Indian guru and the Hindu gods are still selling well from this cramped shop in central Kathmandu, but it seems that few love the king enough to buy his pictures.
“Before the protests, lots used to sell,” says Shrestha, 34. Some of the near life-size photographic prints at his picture and framing shop cost some 15,000 Nepali rupees (200 US dollars).
“The expensive ones used to sell to police officers, army officers. Regular people also used to buy it, but now sales have gone down.”
In the kingdom where the monarch was revered as the incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, it was commonplace for Nepalese to have pictures of the royals in their homes.
Photographs of the former king Birendra, loved more than his brother Gyanendra, still adorn many homes.
But Birendra’s reign was cut short by a 2001 palace massacre when the crown prince Dipendra was blamed for drunkenly mowing down nine members of the royal family before turning the gun on himself.
Dipendra’s prints are even less popular than Gyanendra’s. But there’s also little love for Gyanendra’s son Paras, a former playboy, who is next in line to take over the 237-year-old rule of the Shah dynasty.
Despite caving in to protests and allowing the first sitting of parliament for four years on Friday, Gyanendra’s popularity shows little sign of improving and public signs of diminishing respect are growing.
A poll of 5,000 people published in March by the English-language Nepali Times weekly found that more than 70 per cent wanted some sort of monarchy.
Yet the banners and the chants of hundreds of thousands suggested that many Nepalese now want to cut his powers of a republic with no king at all — particularly if it’s Gyanendra.
“The king will have to be removed,” says Sham Hari Sharma, 45, a religious story teller at a political rally on the eve of parliament’s first sitting.
“Not all kings are the incarnation of Vishnu ... here every king was called an incarnation of Vishnu which was very unjust to the people.” Sharma says political events in Nepal appeared to mirror prophecies in Hindu texts.
“It is said in the kalyug (Age of Darkness) that some very bad kings will be born who will take away the rights of the people and the people will end the rule of the king,” Sharma added.
Signs of the low opinion in which many Nepalese now hold the king were everywhere during the demonstrations.
Bands of young men destroyed propaganda signs dotted around the centre of the capital and called for the king to be hanged. —AFP
