Nepal’s former king Gyanendra Shah made a rare public appearance earlier this year in the Himalayan nation’s Jhapa district to launch a movement to change the country’s secular constitution and reinstate its identity as a Hindu kingdom.
Thousands of Nepalis gathered at the February event to back the cause, with several marches occurring across the country since.
Last month, just days before Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, more popularly known as Prachanda, flew to New Delhi, key leaders of his Nepal Communist Party approached him with an unlikely memorandum – to hold a public referendum on whether Nepal must remain secular or return to being a Hindu state.
Within days, Dahal had made an unexpected stopover in the central Indian temple town of Ujjain and donned saffron-coloured Hindu robes, replete with sandalwood smeared on his forehead, before conducting temple ceremonies.
Many within Nepal were flummoxed by the sight of a lifelong communist and avowed secularist donning religious robes in Nepal’s parliament. The image caused such a stir that Dahal had to assure parliamentarians that he remained secular.
These might seem disparate events, but Nepal’s politics is witnessing a silent change with the emergence of Hindu nationalism and growing calls for the country to become a Hindu rashtra (nation).
Mounting evidence suggests that some of this might have to do with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The US State Department’s latest International Religious Freedom report quoted Nepali civil society activists saying that the demand for a Hindu state was possibly being funded by Hindu-nationalist outfits with links to the BJP.
“Civil society leaders said what they characterised as right-wing religious groups associated with the BJP in India continued to provide money to influential politicians of all parties to advocate Hindu statehood,” the report said.
The report also added that the BJP might have been “influencing” local Nepalese groups who had been actively pushing for Nepal to return to a Hindu monarchy.
This story was originally published in scmp.com. Read the full story here