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NepalThe Dictatorship of Jang Bahadur
History has not been kind to Jang Bahadur during the
twentieth
century. He was blamed for setting up a dictatorship that
repressed
the entire nation for more than 100 years and left it in a
primitive economic condition. From the standpoint of the
nineteenth
century during which he lived, however, he was a pillar of
strength
who eliminated the useless factional fighting at court,
introduced
innovations into the bureaucracy and the judiciary, and
made
efforts to "modernize" Nepal. In this sense, he remains
one of the
most important figures in Nepalese history.
Jang Bahadur Kunwar's early career paralleled that of
many
members of the lower aristocracy in Nepal, despite the
Kunwar
family's claims of descent from Indian princes. Jang
Bahadur's
great-grandfather was an important military leader under
Prithvi
Narayan Shah in the eighteenth century, and during the war
with
China (1791-92) his grandfather was also a military
leader, who
became one of the four chief administrators (kaji)
of the
Gorkha-Nepalese state. His father, Bala Narasimha Kunwar,
was in
court the day Rana Bahadur Shah was murdered and killed
the
murderer on the spot. For this action, he was rewarded
with the
position of kaji, which was made hereditary in his
family.
Jang Bahadur joined the military service in 1832-33 at the
age of
sixteen. As maternal grandson of Bhimsen Thapa, he lost
his job and
his property when the latter fell. After wandering in
north India
for several years, he returned to Nepal as a captain in
the
artillery in 1840. In November 1841, he was asked by the
king to
join his bodyguard, and in January 1842 he began work as
kaji in the palace. When Mathbar Singh returned to
power,
Jang Bahadur rose with him but Mathbar Singh disliked his
ambition
and had him removed to a lesser position on the staff of
the heir
apparent. When Fateh Jang Chautaria came to power, Jang
Bahadur
became fourth in the hierarchy of the coalition government
and took
pains to flatter the queen while showing no signs of
ambition to
Gagan Singh. A career opportunist, he was ready and
waiting when
the time came to act at the Kot Massacre.
Queen Rajendralakshmi was not pleased by the new prime
minister. She conspired to eliminate Jang Bahadur and
elevate her
son to the throne. The Basnyat Conspiracy, so called
because many
of its participants belonged to one of the last leading
noble
families, the Basnyats, was betrayed, and its ringleaders
were
rounded up and executed in 1846. A meeting of leading
notables
packed with Rana supporters found the queen guilty of
complicity in
the plot, stripped her of her powers, and sent her into
exile in
Banaras along with King Rajendra. The king still had
illusions of
grandeur and began plotting his return from India. In 1847
Jang
Bahadur informed the troops of the exiled king's
treasonous
activities, announced his dethronement, and elevated
Rajendra's son
to the throne as Surendra Bikram Shah (1847-81). Rajendra
was
captured later that year in the Tarai and brought back as
a
prisoner to Bhadgaon, where he spent the rest of his life
under
house arrest.
By 1850 Jang Bahadur had eliminated or overawed all of
his
major rivals, installed his own candidate on the throne,
appointed
his brothers and cronies to all the important posts, and
ensured
that major administrative decisions were made by himself
as prime
minister. At this point, he took the unprecedented step of
traveling to Britain, leaving from Calcutta in April 1850
and
returning to Kathmandu in February 1851. Although he
unsuccessfully
tried to deal directly with the British government while
he was
there, the main result of the tour was a great increase in
goodwill
between the British and Nepal. Recognizing the extent of
the world
and the power of industrialized Europe, he became
convinced that
close cooperation with the British was the best way to
guarantee
Nepal's independence. From then on, European architecture,
fashion,
and furnishings became more prevalent in Kathmandu and
among the
Nepalese aristocracy in general.
As part of his modernization plans, Jang Bahadur
commissioned
leading administrators and interpreters of texts on dharma
to
revise and codify the legal system of the nation into a
single body
of laws, a process that had not been carried out since the
seventeenth century under Ram Shah of Gorkha. The result
was the
1,400-page Muluki Ain of 1854, a collection of
administrative
procedures and legal frameworks for interpreting civil and
criminal
matters, revenue collection, landlord and peasant
relations,
intercaste disputes, and marriage and family law. In
contrast to
the older system, which had allowed execution or bodily
mutilation
for a wide range of offenses, the Muluki Ain severely
limited--
without abolishing--corporal punishment. For example, the
old
system gave wide scope for blood vengeance by aggrieved
parties,
such as cuckolded husbands, but the Muluki Ain restricted
such
opportunities. Substitutions included confiscation of
property or
prison terms. Torture to obtain confessions was abolished.
Strict
penalties were set down for the abusers of judicial
positions and
also for persons maliciously accusing judges of
corruption. There
were statutes of limitations for judicial actions.
Caste-based
differences in the degree of punishments remained
throughout, with
higher castes (for example, Brahmans) exempt from the
corporal
punishments and heavy fines that lower-caste members
incurred for
the same crimes. This distinction was in keeping with the
traditional approach of the dharma shastras, or
ancient
legal treatises
(see The Judicial System
, ch. 5).
After his return from Europe, Jang Bahadur took steps
to
increase his hold over the country. He reduced the king to
a
prisoner in his own palace, surrounded by agents of the
prime
minister and restricted and supervised at all times. No
one outside
the king's immediate family could see the king without
permission
from the prime minister. All communications in the name of
the king
were censored, and he was allowed to read only approved
literature.
In 1856 the king issued a royal decree (sanad) that
formalized the dominance of the Kunwar family. There were
three
main provisions in this crucial document. First, the prime
minister
had complete authority over all internal administration,
including
civil, military, and judicial affairs, and all foreign
relations,
including the powers to make war and peace. Second, Jang
Bahadur
was made great king (maharajah) of Kaski and Lamjung
districts, in
effect serving as their independent ruler. The Shah king
retained
the title of maharajadhiraja (supreme king) and the
right to
use the honorific term shri five times with his
name. The
prime minister could use shri three times with his
name. In
this way, Jang Bahadur stopped short of taking the throne
outright
but elevated his family to a level second only to the
royal house,
which remained as a symbol of the nation. Finally,
provisions were
established for hereditary succession to the post of prime
minister. Brothers and then sons would inherit the
position in
order of seniority. These provisions meant that the
dictatorship of
the Kunwar family, a virtual monarchy within the monarchy,
would be
passed down in the family for generations, with no legal
mechanism
for changing the government. Later, Jang Bahadur
established
official Rolls of Succession that ranked all his
descendants in
relation to their hereditary rights to the office of prime
minister.
Jang Bahadur sealed the arrangement with the Shah
Dynasty by
arranging marriages between his heirs and the royal house.
In 1854
his eldest son, Jagat Jang (aged eight), married the
eldest
daughter (aged six) of Surendra Bikram Shah. In 1855 his
second son
married the second daughter of the king. The ultimate test
was
passed in 1857, when heir apparent Trilokya Bir Bikram
married two
daughters of Jang Bahadur. A son of this union ascended to
the
throne in 1881.
Nepal began to experience some successes in
international
affairs during the tenure of Jang Bahadur. To the north,
relations
with Tibet had been mediated through China since Nepal's
defeat in
1792, and during the early nineteenth century embassies
had to make
the arduous journey to Beijing every five years with local
products
as tribute to the Qing emperor. By 1854, however, China
was in
decline and had fallen into a protracted period of
disturbances,
including the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64), revolts by
Muslim ethnic
groups north of Tibet, and war with European powers. The
Nepalese
mission to Beijing in 1852, just after the death of the
sixth
Panchen Lama, was allegedly mistreated in Tibet. Because
of this
slight, the Nepalese government sent a protest letter to
Beijing
and Lhasa outlining several grievances, including
excessive customs
duties on Nepalese trade. In 1855 Nepalese troops overran
the Kuti
and Kairang areas. Hostilities lasted for about a year,
with
successes and failures on both sides, until a treaty
negotiated by
the Chinese resident and ratified in March 1856 gave
Nepalese
merchants duty-free trade privileges, forced Tibet to pay
an annual
tribute of 10,000 rupees to Nepal, and allowed a Nepalese
resident
in Lhasa. In return, Nepal gave up territorial gains and
agreed
that it, as well as Tibet, would remain a tributary state
subject
to China. As the Qing Empire disintegrated later in the
century,
this tributary status was allowed to lapse, and even Tibet
began to
shake off its subordination.
The outbreak of disorder to the south also allowed the
Nepalese
army to take a more active role in international affairs.
Beginning
in May 1857, a series of related uprisings throughout
north India--
known as the Sepoy Rebellion--threatened to topple the
power of the
British East India Company. The uprisings began with
widespread
mutinies in the company's army and spread to include
peasant
revolts and alliances of the old Mughal aristocracy
against the
foreigner. Most of the major cities west of Bengal fell
into rebel
hands, and the aged Mughal emperor was proclaimed the
leader of a
national revolution. Initially there was some fear in
British
circles that Nepal would side with the rebels and turn the
tide
irrevocably against the British East India Company, but
Jang
Bahadur proved to be a loyal and reliable ally. At that
point,
immediately following hostilities in Tibet, the army of
Nepal had
grown to around 25,000 troops. Jang Bahadur sent several
columns
ahead and then marched with 9,000 troops into northern
India in
December 1857. Heading an army of 15,000 troops, he fought
several
hard battles and aided the British in their campaigns
around
Gorakhpur and Lucknow. The prime minister returned to
Nepal
triumphantly in March 1858 and continued to aid the
British in
rooting out "rebels" who had been dislocated during the
chaos and
sought refuge in the Tarai.
After the Sepoy Rebellion had been crushed and Britain
had
abolished the British East India Company and taken direct
control
of India in 1858, Nepal received a reward for its loyalty.
Western
sections of the Tarai that had been ceded through the
Treaty of
Sagauli in 1816 were returned. Henceforth, the British
were firm
supporters of Jang Bahadur's government, and Nepal later
became an
important source of military recruits for the British army
(see From the Anglo-Nepalese War to World War II
, ch. 5).
In 1858 King Surendra bestowed upon Jang Bahadur Kunwar
the
honorific title of Rana, an old title denoting martial
glory used
by Rajput princes in northern India. He then became Jang
Bahadur
Rana, and the later prime ministers descended from his
family added
his name to their own in honor of his accomplishments.
Thus they
all became "Jang Bahadur Ranas," and their line became
known as the
house of the Ranas. Jang Bahadur remained prime minister
until
1877, suppressing conspiracies and local revolts and
enjoying the
fruits of his early successes. He exercised almost
unlimited power
over internal affairs, taking for his own use whatever
funds were
available in the treasury. He lived in the high style of
an
Anglicized native prince in the British Raj, although
unlike the
Indian princes he was the ruler of a truly independent
nation, an
ally rather than a subordinate of the British. He died as
he had
lived, a man of action, during a hunting expedition in the
Tarai.
Data as of September 1991
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