KING BIRENDRA BIR BIKRAM SHAH DEV OF NEPAL, who has been killed aged 55, was the world’s only Hindu king and was considered by his followers to be an incarnation of the god Vishnu. Although King Birendra had been educated within the constraints of western constitutional monarchy, after his accession to the throne in 1972 he ruled his country as an absolute monarch, albeit a benign one. But in 1990, following a series of strikes and pro-democracy riots, he was forced to agree a new democratic constitution framed along British lines. The King was never so popular with his subjects as when most of his powers had been taken away from him. A well-meaning, serious and rather shy man, he proved himself temperamentally well suited to the role of constitutional monarch. The first 10 years of democracy in Nepal were marred by political instability; yet King Birendra steadfastly refused to go beyond the rights given him under the 1990 constitution to “be informed”, to “encourage” and to “warn”. Thus the King found himself commanding a respect and genuine affection from his people which he had never enjoyed as an autocrat. By 2000, many of those who in 1990 had gleefully thrown out photographs of the portly and bespectacled monarch (a near-compulsory fixture in Nepalese shops and homes during his earlier years) had pinned them up again of their own accord.bution, such as text message queue system and others have been stalled since long for no apparent reason.
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