Massacre at the Palace: The Doomed Royal Dynasty of Nepal

Rating:
Summary: Doomed is not being too critical
Review: 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, "For those of you whose letters indicate that you see nothing at all strange about the proposition that you have to kill a cow to get the cheese, all I can say is that you ought to think about getting out a little more." This history of the doomed royal dynasty of Nepal applies that thinking to just about anyone who can't decide how much they should care about cows. High-caste Hindus in the Himalayas "had chosen to go into exile rather than live under beef-eating Muslims" (MASSACRE AT THE PALACE, p. 7) in India, but the army with which it had originally conquered Nepal included many warrior tribes, including beef-eaters. When there was gunfire in the Royal Palace of Nepal, it was usually "the crown prince practicing on one of the firing ranges, or blasting off at cats, bats, rats, crows, or just about anything else that moved." (p. ix). Stories about deer hunters who shoot a cow are usually about a mistake, or some kind of joke, and this book searches through history as if there must be some other possible explanation.

For the royal family, modern times brought an inability to tell what mattered. "The king had to walk a fine line between his own liberal views and the minimum requirements of a Hindu monarch. He had little time for caste divisions nor, for that matter, the issue of cow slaughter, which is firmly linked with the Gorakhnath cult and is still a live issue today." (p. 113). It was not obvious what path would be best for the future, and the royal family was becoming too interested in personal fulfillment to offer realistic alternatives for Nepal or even for history. This is a serious book. Once you start reading it, you ought to be thinking about why it matters.

Rating:
Summary: Doomed is not being too critical
Review: 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, "For those of you whose letters indicate that you see nothing at all strange about the proposition that you have to kill a cow to get the cheese, all I can say is that you ought to think about getting out a little more." This history of the doomed royal dynasty of Nepal applies that thinking to just about anyone who can't decide how much they should care about cows. High-caste Hindus in the Himalayas "had chosen to go into exile rather than live under beef-eating Muslims" (MASSACRE AT THE PALACE, p. 7) in India, but the army with which it had originally conquered Nepal included many warrior tribes, including beef-eaters. When there was gunfire in the Royal Palace of Nepal, it was usually "the crown prince practicing on one of the firing ranges, or blasting off at cats, bats, rats, crows, or just about anything else that moved." (p. ix). Stories about deer hunters who shoot a cow are usually about a mistake, or some kind of joke, and this book searches through history as if there must be some other possible explanation.

For the royal family, modern times brought an inability to tell what mattered. "The king had to walk a fine line between his own liberal views and the minimum requirements of a Hindu monarch. He had little time for caste divisions nor, for that matter, the issue of cow slaughter, which is firmly linked with the Gorakhnath cult and is still a live issue today." (p. 113). It was not obvious what path would be best for the future, and the royal family was becoming too interested in personal fulfillment to offer realistic alternatives for Nepal or even for history. This is a serious book. Once you start reading it, you ought to be thinking about why it matters.

Rating:
Summary: Royal Mass Murder
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Royal Mass Murder
Review: 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.