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June 4, 2001

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Rajeev Srinivasan

Who killed the royal family of Nepal?

There is something not quite right in the agency reports regarding the mysterious deaths of the royal family of Nepal. First, there is the curious story that the crown prince, Dipendra, having massacred his entire family, then tried to kill himself. He might have succeeded, except he contrived to shoot himself in the back of the head. This appears rather difficult to do, especially with an assault rifle. So then who shot him? And the latest story is that an Uzi assault rifle "exploded". Very strange, that an explosion should have precisely targeted all these people.

Second, there was the immediate certificate of non-involvement given to China by that self-proclaimed expert on the affairs of the Indian subcontinent, Barbara Crossette of The New York Times, thanks to reader Sanjai who pointed this out to me. The Hindu newspaper, despite its name a left-wing paper, said the same thing: that the "so-called" Maoists had nothing to do with this, thanks to reader Suresh. Said Crossette:

"More recently, as democratically elected governments of left and right run by a few upper-caste families with little grassroots contact have stumbled, a powerful radical leftist movement, usually described as Maoist but not thought to be backed by China, has been on the march in the Nepalese countryside. The rebels [are] gradually encircling Kathmandu and severely damaging its economically important tourist industry."

Methinks the woman [and The Hindu too] doth protest too much. Did anybody accuse China yet? But here is Crossette, a consistent China-lover, instantly asserting that China was not at fault: suspicious, isn't it? And this is China's modus operandi -- stoke Maoist insurgencies as part of its missionary activity. Indonesia some time ago, Sri Lankan too, and ongoing activities in India. These are all part of the general empire-building tactics intended to result in the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, the only catch being that all the prosperity will belong to China.

A Maoist insurrection right next door to occupied Tibet, just like the insurrections in India's Nagaland, Myanmar, etc -- the Chinese have nothing to do with these either, so horrified they would be at the suggestion, innocent and peace-loving as they are!

Wait, there's more: it is not China, it's India behind this outrage. Actually it's those darn Hindus; note the casual mention of caste in the above. As if the hoi polloi proletariat are running things in America: WASP elite do. Says Crossette:

"Underlying all the other tensions, the Nepalese continue to nurse a long-held fear that neighboring India may be behind the country's political problems. Leaders of Nepal's Congress Party, which was once banned but returned to political leadership a decade ago at the vanguard of the democracy movement, have acknowledged that they had considerable Indian support.

"India, which blockaded landlocked Nepal a decade ago to punish it for buying weapons from the Chinese, has again recently accused Nepal of growing too close to China and also of allowing Pakistani agents to operate from its territory."

Ah, a mere accusation regarding Pakistani agents. A Pakistani embassy official was caught with incriminating evidence about his involvement in the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight that ended up in Kandahar. No, facts do not deter Crossette. One of these days I wish someone would explain to me why the NY Times keeps her on their staff.

So it's all India's fault. (Why isn't this the Sonia Gandhi Congress Party's fault? After all they were the ones who did all this.) Anyone remember Crossette's gem a few months ago where she explained that you see, true democracy is practised not in India, but in Pakistan and China? I wonder, is this woman related to Katherine Mayo, infamous author of that "gutter-inspector's report", Mother India? Why are some white women so anti-India? Like that Robin Raphel? I do have theories, but that's for another day.

Further, says Crossette, omniscient as usual (yes, she did write a book on the Himalayan kingdoms, which I suspect is as banal and meaningless as her book on India), goes on to implicitly suggest that Queen Aishwarya was a bad person whose death was no loss:

"Nepal, the world's only Hindu kingdom, experienced a huge political upheaval in 1990, when a democracy movement threatened the future of the monarchy, but stopped short of forcing the abdication of the king, who was widely accepted by the Nepalese to be a reincarnation of the god Vishnu. Nepal then accepted King Birendra as a constitutional monarch. But there was always far less sympathy for the queen, and the king withdrew significantly from public life after that...

The British Broadcasting Corporation's correspondent for South Asia reported from Kathmandu, the capital, that the crown prince had quarrelled with his mother over his choice of a bride. Queen Aishwarya had long been associated in the minds of Nepal's democrats with a rigid, outdated penchant for absolute monarchy and social conservatism. Dipendra had made efforts to appear more open to the Nepalese people."

Yes, wicked queen, indeed: off with her head. How dare she have an opinion on her son's wife-to-be? I wonder what Crossette thought of the British queen's opinion of her daughter-in-law Princess Diana -- was she entitled to one?

And more on what a terrible person King Birendra was:

"Birendra inherited from his father a system of partyless rule through rubber-stamp local and regional councils known as panchayats. The system afforded only the barest facade of democracy and was a constant irritant to the people of Nepal, who saw in it not only unbridled royal privilege but also the source of corruption and the abuse of political power by royal favorites who had no interest in the development of this mountainous country, still one of the poorest in the world."

Yes, good thing the king was killed: let us bring on egalitarian Maoist rule, as in Tibet!

The overthrow and murder of a royal dynasty is standard practice for Marxists: witness what happened in Russia. (The Hindu was magisterial about this issue: there is no comparison between the royal massacres in Russia and Nepal, they declared. Really? And why is that?) So why not do this in Nepal too, to put even more pressure on India, as part of the continuing Chinese encirclement of India?

The first response to the Indian warming up to the US was the lease for the port of Gwadar in Pakistan, with the intent of also building roads to link it to the Karakoram Highway across Pakistani-occupied Kashmir.

When the dust settles, I suspect we will find that poor King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, and most of their family were massacred not because of their son's love-life or what an astrologer said, but simply and cold-bloodedly as part of the Sino-Islamic attack on Hindu civilization. There are Judases everywhere who will betray their own to the enemy. It is a bloody coup d'etat, and this is the second Chinese response to India's support for US positions. Didn't Chinese strongman Zhu Rongji just visit Nepal two weeks ago? And The Hindustan Times suggests that the new regent, Gyanendra, is close to the Pakistanis.

I have noticed that Marxists kill Hindus with no compunctions: for instance this has been going on in Kerala's Kannur district for some time. Every person killed by the Marxists there is a Hindu, and that is of course not news. But when they started killing Muslims, this became big news; there was outrage in the 'secular' media. Naturally, the Christian-Muslim-Marxist alliance to destroy Hindu civilization has to be preserved at all costs!

I remember reading somewhere recently that there are also massive conversion activities going on in Nepal by both Pakistan and the Christians. And so the war goes on, for the total annihilation of the only civilization that has withstood the thrust of the Semites for all these centuries.

Rajeev Srinivasan

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