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Article Excerpt
In the center of Katmandu, on a day when the air is clear, you can count the layers of Hanuman Dhoka's red roof, which lift delicately out of one another in a stack nine stories high. In the thirteenth century, before the current strain of rapacious and ill-starred Shah kings massacred their way to the throne, a family named Malla, believed to have come from India, built Hanuman Dhoka and founded the kingdom of Nepal. Every day, after a lunch of what may have been mouse deer, the Malla king is said to have climbed to the top of his nine-story pagoda and peered down into his happy valley of serfs. If smoke wasn't rising from each chimney, the kindhearted king dispatched a scout to see what was wrong. That, people say, is how peaceful the Katmandu valley should be when held in the palm of a benevolent monarch. But the valley is no longer the largest part of Nepal, and herein lies the root of the current crisis. Nepal is virtually two countries: Katmandu, land of high-speed Internet and "Hima-lattes"; and the land that lies beyond, where there are no roads or hospitals and there is no government except for the young soldiers dispatched to fight the growing power of Maoist guerrillas.
Since it became Nepal, most of the kingdom has been abandoned by the state. When the Mallas' power waned, as power tends to, the Shah Dynasty rose in its stead. The Shahs, who still sit on the throne--the current king, Gyanendra, is eleventh in the line--expanded the kingdoms' boundaries to where they are today. This dynasty's legacy has been a brutal one since 1775, when the first Shah king, Prithwi Narayan Shah, cut the lips and noses off men over twelve years old in an entire city simply to show that he could. One hundred years later, a family of scheming and greedy politicos, the Ranas, became the chief advisers to the throne. Lacing royal banquets with opium and marrying the royals off to their children, the Ranas ruled Nepal as their personal empire from 1846 to 1950. Outside the Katmandu valley, the only state representative Nepalis ever saw was the tax man, and taxes went straight into Rana bank accounts abroad. Finally, in 1950, one Shah king dared to escape from the Ranas. Pretending that he was going on a hunting trip and ducking into the Indian Embassy, he flew to Delhi to sign an agreement called the Delhi Compromise. The agreement was supposed to establish a constitutional monarchy in Nepal and usher in the beginning of democracy. But Nepal's first bout with democracy, like all the others, didn't last. Less than a decade later, the king abruptly dismissed the prime minister and usurped political power, which is exactly what the current king did on February 1, 2005.
King Gyanendra took power after his nephew gunned down his entire family in the Royal Massacre of 2001. He is a taciturn businessman who seems never to have slept very well. Three months ago, citing the government's failure to end the Maoist rebellion (which, according to the Nepali Times, has claimed more than 11,000 lives in the last nine years), King Gyanendra sacked the prime minister, cut all lines of communication--phone, Internet, newspapers--arrested journalists and human-rights advocates, and seized absolute power for at least the next three years. Despite the world's disapproval, including that of the United States, there is little anyone can do: The gray-faced and goutish King Gyanendra, the eleventh Shah king (though, according to prophecy there were supposed to be only ten kings in the Shah Dynasty), is still seen by many as the direct descendant of the god Vishnu.
In the months before King Gyanendra seized power, 300 women were corralled one morning into a twenty-foot-high enclosure at army headquarters in Katmandu. By 9:00 A.M., most of them were squinting and shielding their faces from the bright sun with pink registration cards. As part of a public-relations campaign--and to counter the reality that more and more Maoist guerrilla women are sneaking through checkpoints--the army has begun to incorporate women into its ranks. So far, among 85,000 soldiers about 400 are women. The army is especially proud of a Widows' Unit made up of wives whose husbands were killed by the Maoists. But this recent morning was the first chance women had to apply for the rank of officer, specifically that of second lieutenant. A television crew zoomed in suspiciously close on women practicing push-ups. Other girls stood in a row waiting for their turn to take the required physical test. The male officers standing around struck a pose of relaxed authority. Most wore mirrored sunglasses and high, shiny boots. From across the enclosure, they looked like, or perhaps hoped to look like, a group of Erik Estradas from CHiPs.
The women in line were nervous. Most were educated and belonged to the high caste of Brahmins. Soldiering has traditionally been beneath Brahmins, but times are changing in Nepal, at least for the educated elite. "I am supposed to pray and worship God," Nisha Kirin, eighteen, said. She was trying to explain to me how caste works. With wings of short glossy hair and a thick, pretty face, she looked a little like a baby water buffalo. 'Tin not the kind to indulge in war." As Brahmins, none of her family knew anything about army life, and they were apprehensive about Kirin's choice. "People say that this will affect our chance to get married, but if boys can do it, why not us? Marriage is not everything." The girls around her nodded, but they looked unconvinced. Plus, she said, "I want to do something for my country."
"The Maoists have high principles," Kirin told me, "so they attract everyone who is interested in struggling for equality," she went on. "Some of my friends from my village have joined them. If I lived in the village, I'd be a Maoist, too. People can't eat, study, or find jobs." She inched forward as the line moved toward the height-measuring station. To join the army, you have to be five feet tall, and it wasn't clear to me that she would make it. The test also entailed eight sit-ups and seven push-ups, and Kirin, who'd been practicing for a week, was nervous about her chances. As she...
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