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Sudhindra
Sharma/The dharmashastric view(s) of Hindu kingship:
Implications for the debate on constitutional
monarchy and democracy in Nepal
Classical
debates on religion and kingship that have taken
place in France or the UK are irrelevant to the
Nepali context. The dharmashastras provide a much
better understanding of the Hindu king’s
right to rule and religion, and the Hindu kingship
of Nepal must be examined in the light of these
texts. In his exploratory paper, Sudhindra Sharma
argued that in spite of being a Hindu state, Nepal
has only one Hindu institution, which is the monarchy.
The Hindu identity of the Nepali state may be
reinforced by certain rules, such as the ban on
cow slaughter, the ban on proselytisation, and
the promotion of Hindu festivals, but these are
only symbols. In such a situation, it is possible
to secularise the Nepali state while maintaining
the ‘Hinduness’ of the kingship.
The
separation of secular and sacred activities in
a Hindu state is determined by caste. Thus, Sharma
proposed that the Hindu kingdom was better placed
to accommodate secularism than a state that fuses
the secular and sacred spheres. In India, the
functions of the king have been secularised, while
religious functions have been given over to brahmins;
in Nepal, the magico-religious functions in the
Hindu state have been entrusted to the priests,
while the king has assumed the political functions.
The kingship is inherently Hindu in Nepal, but
state secularism and a Hindu king are not necessarily
oppositional to each other. Since the kingship
is the only Hindu institution in the country,
a separation of the king and the kingdom would
easily facilitate an arrangement whereby the king
is Hindu but the kingdom is secular.
The
dharmashastras, which also contain theories of
social contract, do not posit any one view on
kingship. They contain varied views on politics,
including the Hobbesian idea of the big devouring
the small, or matsyayana (the big fish consuming
the small fry). However, since the Nepali king
is regarded as an avatar of Vishnu, he falls outside
the pale of the dharmashastras. He is supposed
to be married to the earth, but today, the king
no longer owns all the land in the kingdom. In
practice, therefore, from these examples and many
more, it can be surmised that Nepal is already
a secular kingdom, and to separate the religious
identity of the king from that of the country
is not unimaginable.
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