Massacre at the Palace: The Doomed Royal Dynasty of Nepal

Drug use warning: The religious context of this book is Nepal, and the author, Jonathan Gregson, is likely to describe the Hindu temple attendants in Kathmandu as being stoned, a stunning departure from purity in a book about a curse that is described as: "It is also about ritual purity and, strange to say, the symbiotic relationship between cows and kings." (p. 6).I might have given up on this book, already, but it is difficult to decide. The most modern aspect of our global situation faced in this book is the enormously destructive power of modern weapons, but the psychological potential to find something beyond mere entertainment in the use of such tools of sudden destruction keeps being thwarted by shock. What was really great might already be lost. A lot of intellectual activity seems most meaningful when it still creates the impression that it is going someplace. It might be unsettling to readers and shoppers searching for modern consumer items, contemplating momentary enjoyment of the best that this market has to offer, that the best items available should be evaluated as historical artifacts, more meaningful as a memory in a lifetime that has already registered these deaths as part of the problems encountered in going with the flow. Could anything be worse than now, when shoppers merely contemplate them as objects that might be produced by prospective expenditures? This ought to make at least as much sense as page 16 of the New Republic of October 7, 2002, which quotes Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, telling my U.S. Senator, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, "What's different is three thousand people were killed!" Would this particular consumer item be worth less, if the only people who had ever been killed in Kathmandu's royal palace one day were Nepal's royal family?There is no index in this book, but it is unlikely that an index would have listed all the entries for cows, anyway. The first chapter is called "Of Cows and Kings," and the religious background for this book includes a curse on Prithvi Narayan Shah, the first king of the Royal family, which has ruled Nepal since 1769. "According to a legend that is as old as the Kingdom of Nepal," (p. 4) Gorakhnath was a Hindu sage, "and he lived only on milk, butter, and curd, the product of Hinduism's sacred cows." (p. 5). The story reminds me of a joke about cows which was fully explained by Calvin Trillin in a column called "Uncivil Liberties" (The Nation, 11/21/1988, p. 518). During the Iowa primary campaign, Trillin tried to suggest how the contest was overly sensitive to agricultural issues, and he later had to eat his words. "I would like to say in the most direct way possible that Michael Dukakis was never under the impression that you have to kill a cow to get the cheese. George Bush never said that the life of dairy farmers is particularly hard because they're often required to milk right through the cocktail hour." In response to his critics, Trillin wrote, "F

Though it failed to generate a huge amount of interest in the U.S., the killing of the entire royal family of Nepal by the country's Crown Prince is an incredible story. Had he not been a Royal, Crown Prince Dipendra would still have to go down as one of the most diabolical mass murderers in history. In all, he managed to kill his entire immediate family and five other close relatives in quick succession before turning his gun on himself. Author Jonathan Gregson sets the table by recounting the entire history of Nepal's royal family, which stretches back to the mid eighteenth century. To say that the dynasty has had an unhappy history is an understatement, and after awhile the numerous accounts of Royal bloodletting become monotonous. Nevertheless, this history is vital to the story.Flash forward to June 1, 2001. The Crown Prince is an unhappy man of thirty. An alcoholic and a drug addict, he has been denied permission to marry the woman he loves by his domineering mother and threatened with being removed from the line of succession to the throne. Gregson sets all of this up well and then recounts the bloody events as they happened. The secrective nature of Nepal's royal family and the god-like awe to which the king is still held there seems to have smewhat stunted Gregson's narrative. Still, he does a fine job with what he was able to decipher. Along the way, he paints a vivid portrait of a fiercely proud third world country that is forever wrestling with the conflict between traditionalism and modernism.Overall, "Massacre at the Palace" is an enlightening book that is full of surprises.