We were taught in school that this charismatic king of gorkha unified a nation that was divided in to fragments of small kingdoms.I do not recall anywhere in the earlier part of Nepal's history about the kingdom being a single nation before its unification.How could this be possible?The present monarch which is a product of the gorkha palace endorses and enforces that belief.The wit and military strength of gorkha king Prithivi infact used the offensive military tactics to declare wars and attack smaller kingdoms to stretch his empire.Gurkha king was an imperialist not a unifier.
May all be aware.
"Sabai lai chetana bhaya"
Rr
Please clarify me on this matter.

Sorry Dalli,
Its very upsetting.Reality bites....

Yah.. People, just don't kill yourselves over it...

rrahula,

Well as I said, give some credit for those who did something good. You cannot deny the fact that prithvi united Neapl. If he did not unite Nepal, there will be no Nepal. I do not know what he had thought about Nepal but heard he is a visionary.

About darkage, you do not beleive king is a God and I do not. So its a matter of time. But I bet there will be no way in hell that you can convince old folks who think king is God. But it did come out of prithvi but it was prevalent before that if you know what I am saying.

Tell me one thing. Do you decide to die being a poor nepali (obviously with your own country n' flag) not having enough to eat, no job, no clothes, no education, no good house, unaware of anything around the world or JUST BEING A GOOD HUMAN BEING NO MATTER WHEVER U R N" HAVING A PEACEFUL GOOD LIFE?

We are proud that an imperialist gave birth to this nation called Nepal.But instead of planting the seeds of affection and dedication for one's country he deviated the worship culture toward his palace and hence we lack real patriotism like the rest.
Remember "Hamro Raja,Hamro Desh pran bhanda pyaro cha"
I wish it was just hamro desh,hamro pran or something.
What happened in our case was.
Power tends to corrupt.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

gwajyo,

Just use u r common sense. Back then, every other country was trying to expand. Thats what prithvi did. Ya, I admit there never been a good leader for the nation. You keep on whining about it or try to move on. Just look at the history of all the other nations. US, Britain and even india and China.

Its time to move on. Atleast, I can still say I am a Nepali.

You gotta stand up for your rights and move on with time. I do not know what is the conclusion you got out of my postings.

peace

Gwajyo,
who are you asking this question?

Gwajyo Bau cha:
Sorry dude but I will have to throw the towel on being a poor Nepali wiith nothing. That sounds like the worst kind of loser to me.

HighFly Bro:
I have not seen anything to back up your statement that Prithvi was a visionary. I think he just got lucky. I do give him the credit for uniting Nepal but I said earlier it was just a bi product of his ambition to rule more land/people... So what does that make him ?

Hey guys, come to some common sense. Get out of your materialistic convenient life. Do you know anything about suffering of nepalese people. You don't represent them. Ask majority of poorest nepalese. They won't probably give much damn about the country. They need education, food, shelter, health. We will never understand their suffering. There're people in Nepal who has not even enough to cover their body. Don't u feel like CRYING?

highfly: Prithvi may be good but things got worse and worse after his death. What happened to Bahadur Shah, who expanded rest of Nepal after the death of Prithvi? He got prisoned for doing good to NEPAL.

Gwajyo,be realistic on this matter.Would you?We have not become blindfolded by the luxuries of twenty first century materials.Action speaks louder than words.Sorry at this point I have nothing to offer for the poor and downtrodden.I can only promise you in the future I might do something for the cause of thirld world.I agree with you but what can we do when we are sitting before this monitor.
We can imagine and rewrite romeo and juliet but to actually fall in love takes time and dedicatio.It is same phenomenon here.Only when time arrives:)
Back to Prithivi and how true is the story of soothsayer who predicted about 13 generation monarchs.

I don't really believe in predictions. What i'm trying to say is that GOODNESS FOR HUMAN-BEING should be far above petty nationalistic. Look at those people who died for their country and who got benefited. Have anyone of you watched movie 'Balidan' or Bidhan shrestha's "Machhi Marna jauna Dajai Kala panima'? Why're these banned now?

Gwajyo,don't get excited.It takes time for the mind to be enlightened.You were fortunate to enlightened sooner perhaps because you got better education but its a long process.Nationalistic views are outdated now.The world has become one playground.But not all have benefited from that.Maybe bangalore has or KTM not Bharatpur or jumla.:)

O.k.

So Prithivi was imperialist. Not a unifier.

Now, tell me what is wrong in being an imperialist? And why can he not be termed as a unifier?

Wait! Hold on.

Not so early. Before you jump off the wagon, and give me million reasons as to what exactly is wrong as being perceived as an imperialist, instead of a unifier, let me understand one thing clear - are we not talk about history, say like of 200 years and plus?

And what were the situations back then? How big were the so called "sano rajya haru" all over what is known as Nepal until this day? Weren't the bigger kingdoms then, in what is known as India today, falling to the foreign invaders?

Whereas, is Prithivi the sole reason why then British occupied India could not gobble Nepal? I do not know. But Nepal being a unified country and not "dass biss kilometer ko rajye" has a lot to do with him. Now, let's not even talk about, "British did not want Nepal" or "Ramro bhaag lee halyo" blah blah.

Only he knows what he wanted to do. Did he amalgamate those "sano sano rajyas" in to today's Nepal for the sake of all the Nepalese, or he was only satisfying his thirst of power, influence and other imperialistic attributes. Who knows - may be both, or one more so than another.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS, HE DID UNIFY NEPAL.

Aapp ko achar banauna rukh roopeko hoss ya fruits ko roop ma khanu.

Rukh ta ropekai ho nai ho.

No matter how much we bang our head on the wall or try to paint it differently, the fact stares at us like a mirror that you can not break. Period!

Now, later his lineage, the kings that we had turned out to be all "Guu khane," DOES NOT mean that you can take away from what IS.

Imperialist or not, he DID unify Nepal. You can not spin it!

IndisGuise:)

Gwajyo Bau Cha:
So you would prefer to be fugged up poor Nepali than being a billionaire citizen of country x ? If you answer yes, then it is consistent of you not liking animal sacrifices but still enjoying steak for dinner...

Bottomline:
PN Shah did use force against weaker smaller states to fulfill his thirst to become an emperor.Well,that was probably acceptable back then.If in the dawn of 21st century his great great great grandson uses force to crush his people and try to filter the truth for his image maintainance I agree Prithivi wasn't that bad after all.Cruelty flows in their blood and time and time again they have proven that.He unified Nepal but divided our mentality because he was self-centered.

I am glad that at least we agree upon one exactness, as we know it.

Now, let us move on to other matters that you threw.

Prithivi did use force against smaller nations, some as big, few bigger.

However, probably acceptable or not, but it was definitely well understood that almost every other nations were up for grabs, IFF, the nation having that ambition to do so could actually back it with their might. It was more or less a jungle rule, and there was not a body of nations, which said, "Hey hold on, maybe you should think it over." Even then, we have seen how it works, eh'?

Now, to link the means he used to earn his status to that of his future lineage, and their atrocities, which he had no control over is, if not stupid, then definitely far fetched. Can we, as a rationale human being, blame the exact culprit instead of actually dragging in the man just because?

Cruelty may flow in the blood, although there is no an exact science that have absolute creditability to determine this. By the same token, might I as well be audacious enough to say, it may not?

Then, should we blame and accuse, no less, a person whose fault is, well, his great-great-great grandsons turned out to be an assoholes? Is it even fair, let alone logical?

And we talk about mentality. Is not it ironic!

From what I have understood, they say, we were apes before we became to be distinguished as humans. Notwithstanding many traits we share, we definitely have deviated from our original self. We developed nuclear weapons, gone thru holocaust, have killed each other traveling millions of miles, even before our surrounding were threatened. Apes did not do that. Let us blame Apes then.

A far fetched illustration perhaps, but hits the nail on its head.

We both have our bottom-line, I purpose, shall we at least agree upon being logical and point a finger at the definite culprit rather than developing conspiracy theories? That requires us to understand that just because our grandchildren turned out to be dakas, we shall refuse to take it upon us being conceived as daka as well!

And with it, we would not blame a man for the crimes his great-great granchildrens committed.

Else, this far fetched blame game is never ending my friend.

I rest my case.

Atsu!

IndisGuise:)

a.However truth is Nepal was not a unified geographic land before gorkha armies stretched their arms under PN'scommandership winning and embedding them in their own territory.Almost all the hisorians though tell us a complete artificially born events of Nepal being one before the creation of smaller states.That Nepal was one nation before it was many and this visionary commander visualizes one nation and succeds.The present monarch is a product of the ego-centric cruel ambitions of Prithivi Narayan.Hence Prithivi was an imperialist not a unifier.
b.Nepal is unified.Prithivi succeds.While the Europeans and Americans finally realized the values of human freedom and dignity(Getting rid of monarchies and finally enlightning themselves)sons of Prithivi capitalized their might with the baseless ideology of incarnation thrust upon their soul.
c.The dysfunctional royals experience the bitter side of power madness that results in some unbelievable roller-coaster in the family.Ranas enter.
We enter the 21st century still venerating a power-freak and some still believe in history pages that inks artificial accounts.

Well lets first lets give some credit to Prithvi. But its unfortunate that we did not had good rulers after him.

Lets talk about present. You may be right that royals do not hold any significance. But whats the solution, we gotta think about it.

Wish you all Happy Dashain.

HF

Notwithstanding the hollow hero worshipping of so called Badamaharajdhiraj, for many of ethnic groups, when they take a careful analysis of the history, PN Shah was nothing but a bully. If you say he is a unifier, you should also ask at whose costs and who are the beneficiaries? For that matter, one can also argue that the British unified India. To me, a unifier is an individual who takes all sections of people, all ethnic groups living within a certain geographic boundary, regardless of their background, colour, and religion, but not favour just one particular group, caste or religion.

We know how PN Shah cheated the Magars in depriving them of the Magarat kingdom.
We know how he systematically destroyed many of the kingdoms belonged to Tamangs, and autonomously ruled by the Tamangs, which did not fall under Baaise and choubises. In fact, in today?s world, you could try him as a war criminal if you were to look at how he mercilessly ordered to chop off the noses of the Kitripures after he succeeded in attacking the Kathmandu valley during the festival. PN Shah openly ordered to kill the Christians after taking over the valley. So much for his religious tolerance and keeping all sections of people in harmony!

His ?Dibyaupadesh? disparagingly decries certain ethnic groups as ?pakhures?. If you call him a visionary, one could put on him all the blames of all the ills and conflicts that are going on today in Nepal. His vision was, ?chaar jaat, chhattis barna?. He envisioned Nepal of only four castes, does not matter how the modern day apologists twist it to read as ?Chaar barna, Chhattis jaat?. PN Shah and his advisors sowed the seed of the modern day conflict in Nepal. The Maoists appeal would fizzle out if there were no ethnic dissension and discontentment borne out of age old discrimination set up since the PN Shah?s time. On the other hand, you could make the Maoists disappear, win over, or buy off or whatever, but it cannot be done for ever without eliminating the decimation towards certain groups or without changing the current imbalance of power in state affairs.

One reason we have not asked probing questions is because our historians have been either bias deliberately or did not do enough research to bring the truth out in open. We have been brainwashed to accept lies and sheer opinions as truth through our textbooks by Itihas Shiromani Baburam who? Dilli Raman, and Surya Bikram Gyawali and others. Would they have shown guts to write anything that are not pleasing to the establishment? No.

Today, what hurts a sensitive Nepali and provokes his inner self when someone says Buddha was born in India. The Buddhism was born in India, no doubt. However, nobody gives a damn about how the Buddhism was treated by the rulers of Nepal in course of our history, and PN Shah and his advisors took extra care to see that no other religion than Hinduism lived and thrived in Nepal. This is so sad eventhough we take pride in having similarity in Buddhism and Hinduism and exercising tolerance between these two religions. With their staunch Hindu priests as daily and hourly advisors by their side, the Ranas later in their 101 years of oligarchy even reinforced it so hard that the Thakalis began to convert themselves to wearing ?janai? after the 1920s mainly to have an access to the palaces and a business advantage.

If you look at the long span of the rule that is over quarter million years you would find it hard to note anything substantial that measures up to the Shah Kings? contribution to Nepal and its people. Our historians have simply turned the blind eye to it. They simply repeated the same lies again and again which we now take as being the only truth. Many did so because they were the beneficiaries of the perpetuated lies and thus did not see any good in digging out the truth and bring it in open.

I challenge modern day historians, rationalists and above all, all plain thinking people and those who want to see the truth come out in open, without being bias to what caste you belong to, to look at our history one more time and lay it out for us.

I know I have said many things here to provoke the thoughts of many. I will simply relax and take the brickbats.

A nation built on lies is bound to fall like a pack of cards. A burning issue like the one mentioned here must not go without being debated.