Conger

The Nepali parliament has abolished the monarchy, and voted to turn the Himalayan Hindu kingdom into a secular republic.

The Dec 28 vote by members of the provisional parliament was 270 in favor, 3 against, and 48 abstentions, and comes as part of peace negotiations with former Maoist rebels.

The vote to end the 240 year old Hindu monarchy must be ratified by the country’s new parliament, which is to be elected in April.

King Gyanendra (pictured) will continue to live in the palace in central Kathmandu without any powers until after those elections, protected by a 3000-man palace guard. “But if the king creates serious hurdles in the elections he can be removed by a two-third majority of the interim parliament before the polls,” the motion said.

The abolition of the monarchy will be “good for the church when all is said and done,” the Dean of Nepal, the Very Rev. Norman Beale told The Church of England Newspaper.

“The abolition of the monarchy paves the way for the secular state to become a reality, in which diverse religious groups such as Christians, Buddhists, and Muslim will no longer be marginalized as they have been for centuries,” he said.

The 2001 murder of the King’s brother, Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, shocked the country, he said. While Birendra “concurred with widespread belief that he was a living incarnation of Vishnu, many Christians still loved him, or at least respected him,” Dean Beale said. “Gyanendra however, is a different story.”

Under the monarchy, most Christian churches did not choose to register with the government. “There is a saying in Nepal and in much of Asia: the nail that sticks up gets hammered down,” the long service missionary said.

“Many churches felt then as now that it is better not to ask for permission, then you cannot be turned down. So you never try to register, and you just get on with it and conduct your affairs as best you can. Bank accounts and land are held for churches in the names of several individuals,” he said.

While the Church’s legal position will now be on sounder footing, Dean Beale reports that “most Hindu Nepalese will still feel that Christianity is a ‘foreign’ religion,” and “there is regnant in society, if not in legal and royal strata, [of] a kind of xenophobic reaction to the growing Christian community.”

Until the 1950’s, there were only a handful of Christian Nepalis although there had been attempts to send missionaries into the kingdom in the Nineteenth century and in 1821 William Carey translated the New Testament into Nepali.

The church began growing in the 1970’s following the arrival of Indian missionaries, and in the 1980’s the Church of the Province of Southeast Asia began supporting sub rosa missionary work. The spread of Christianity was also fostered by the return home of retired Gurkhas, who had converted to Christianity while serving in the British or Indian armies. Even though missionary activities were forbidden, the church has grown to over 400,000 members in recent years, some two percent of the population.

“Now that many Christian groups will be more open and will seek formal recognition, it is difficult to predict how the wider society will react and what this may mean for the Church,” Dean Beale said.

Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper.