Our late king Birendra

Coming to the throne of Nepal at the age of 27 King Birendra (born 1945) sought to emphasize economic development and a decentralization of authority.

King Birendra (Bir Bikram Shah Dev) of Nepal was born on December 28, 1945, the eldest son of King Mahendra and Queen Indra. He had two brothers and three sisters, as well as numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins in the royal family entourage in and around the palace in Nepal’s capital city. Birendra married Aishwarya R.L. Rana on February 23, 1970; they had three children–Crown Prince Dipindra, Prince Nirajan, and Princess Shruti.

Birendra was born while the Rana family still dominated the government of Nepal and the royal family was kept under strict surveillence. But the political movement that overthrew the Ranas occurred when the crown prince was only five years old, and his socialization into politics and society in Nepal and abroad was very different from that of his father, King Mahendra. Birendra’s formal education, for instance, was in prestigious schools outside Nepal: St. Joseph’s in Darjeeling, India; Eton in England; Harvard University; and the University of Tokyo. In the process, he was exposed to a rich assortment of theories and models on political and economic change in “developing” societies like Nepal, and he demonstrated an open and inquisitive mind on such subjects.

King Birendra came to the throne on January 31, 1972, the tenth ruler in the Shah dynasty in Nepal. He quickly demonstrated a different approach to the processes of governance than those adopted by his predecessor, and important changes in both the style and substance of policies were introduced. The preoccupation of King Mahendra with the minutia of political developments anywhere in Nepal was replaced by a new strategy that, in effect, downgraded politics and focussed instead on economic development themes and issues. The objective was to insulate economic programs from the narrow political and interest group concerns that had, supposedly, hampered their implementation under his father. The new approach sounded reasonable, but the results were less than impressive. While few institutions or persons directly challenged the palace coteries, few cooperated with their programs.

 King Birendra took several significant steps to meet the situation. In 1980 he held, on a universal suffrage basis, a popular referendum on the constitution his father had introduced in 1962. The vote went slightly in favor of the existing system, but with reforms. Birendra then introduced several basic changes in the constitution, including provisions for the election of the Rashtriya Panchayat (National Assembly) on a popular but non-party basis and the selection of a prime minister by the Assembly. The Assembly was elected in 1981; one prime minister was elected and then later removed by the Assembly on a non-confidence vote, and another prime minister installed.

In the midst of ongoing political unease in Nepal, King Birendra fell victim to assassination by his eldest son, Crown Prince Dipendra, on June 1, 2001. As Birendra and his family were having a customary Friday night gathering for dinner, Queen Aiswarya, and Dipendra began to argue over whom he (the Crown Prince) was going to marry. Following the argument, Dipendra, heir to the world’s lone Hindu Kingdom, bolted from the room and returned to dinner wearing military fatigues and equipped with fire arms. He proceeded to murder his entire immediate family, shooting King Birendra first, the Queen, Prince, and Princess and killing several other members of the royal family. Dipendra, turning a gun on himself, survived for two days after the massacre; he was brain dead. While Dipendra lay unconscious in the hospital, the Nepalese Privy Council crowned the comatose killer of the King, King. Upon Dipendra’s death, Prince Gyanendra, King Birendra’s brother, was named King of Nepal, the mountain kingdom…

Since,the King Dipendra is declared as the murderer of royal family.Not a single Nepalese people believed that King Dipendra have killed the Royal family.Many book were published such as “RaktaKunda”  in which written that in the time of incident there were more Dipendra using mask behind the face. 

Anyway our dearer king is still alive in our heart…

                                                                           Copyright prakss.