Between 1990 and 2008, a series of dramatic political events in Nepal ended 240 years of Hindu kingship and gave birth to a secular, federal, democratic republic, proclaimed by a Maoist-led Constituent Assembly. The kings of Nepal acted as the central figures of Hindu royal rituals, which were simultaneously their lineage rituals and events of national political significance. In some of these rituals, the king enacted his relationship with the deities, who blessed him and sanctioned his kingdom. During the political shakedown, the last king of Nepal was denied access to such royal rituals, but some of the key rituals survived, with changes, in the secular republic.
Anne Mocko's Demoting Vishnu looks at how the political and administrative elites of the interim period (2006–8) orchestrated ex-king Gyanendra's demotion. She shows how they disrupted and appropriated his calendar of royal rituals, some of which they transferred to the prime minister. Remarkably, the interim government remained committed to the continued performance of royal Hindu rituals, but they were reconfigured to produce the social identity of a “head of state” who could supplant the king. Rituals constructed the king's social identity, but as he was denied access to these rituals, he lost “the means of reproducing his office” (p. 24) and “lost the social position itself” (p. 16).
In the introduction, Mocko discusses the performative aspect of ritual and its role in creating social positions and in defining and enacting power relationships. She distinguishes succession rituals—designed to sustain kingship beyond the lifetime of an individual king—and reinforcement rituals, which serve to reproduce and strengthen the king's royalty. A historical overview of the Shah dynasty in chapter 2 shows that through the various political configurations over the centuries, religious rituals continually asserted the centrality of the monarchy.
Chapter 3 describes succession rituals, focusing on the rituals celebrated for King Gyanendra in the wake of the royal massacre in 2001, when King Birendra and many members of the royal family were murdered. Mocko argues that the dramatic circumstances were too aberrant for regular ritual procedures (p. 79), and the lack of a credible and prompt narrative to explain these circumstances made the rituals inadequate (she refers to Ronald Grimes's notion of ritual failure) and left Gyanendra's kingship incompletely established. Marianna Kropf's in-depth analysis of the katto ritual, as the critical moment to satisfy and dismiss the spirit of the dead, would have supported and enriched Mocko's arguments about the failure of this funerary ritual supposed to “help dissolve the kingship of a deceased monarch” (p. 70).Footnote 1
Chapters 4 to 6 present the major annual reinforcement rituals: Bhoto Jatra, the showing of god Macchendranath's vest; Kumari Jatra (part of the larger Indra Jatra), enacting the relation between the living goddess Kumari and the king; and Dasain, presenting the king as the nation's patriarch and the subjects as his extended family. Mocko shows that these rituals, once central for Malla kings, were later appropriated and reshaped by the Shah dynasty. They reinforced Gyanendra's critical succession in 2001, but became sites for contesting and dismantling the monarchy in the interim period.
Mocko shows that the republican strategy in handling royal rituals was developed piecemeal over time, and compellingly describes the negotiations, adjustments, and competition (and also periods of ambivalence and confusion) between the government and the palace, sometimes mentioning the resistance of the local religious specialists.
Political changes have always entailed the reworking of rituals of rulers in Nepal. Astrid Zotter argues that the republican recasting of ritual reenacted the foundational political myth of the king of Gorkha, Prithvi Narayan Shah, conquering Kathmandu and receiving divine sanction of his rule by the blessing of the Malla's tutelary deity.Footnote 2 Paradoxically, a royal strategy of “conquest by ritual” seems to have been used by the new republic to mark the end of the monarchy. However, while the Shah kings were Hindu ritual actors who remodeled the ritual idioms of their predecessors according to their vision of Hinduism,some future president or prime minister of secular Nepal might not necessarily be a Hindu: they can only choose whether to attend or to boycott specific rituals. The selection of a particular set of religious rituals by the state freezes them as “national heritage,” reduces their polyvalency, and simultaneously impedes the development of alternative secular state rituals.
Mocko's affirmation that “kings without rituals simply are not kings” (p. 13) begs the question: what are royal rituals—and the gods involved—without kings? What do these rituals do for the republic? The president's attendance at the Kumari Jatra rituals, for example, is a powerful gesture of visual rhetoric that eliminates the risk of the monarchy's return. It also reassures a worried Hindu majority that religious institutions have not been displaced from the public sphere and acknowledges the efficacy of ritual and the value of divine support to the new state. For the Hindu majority, it was inconceivable that the king's demise would extend to the gods, and it is not surprising that the ritual agency of the gods—to bless or disrupt—is an element of continuity in secular Nepal. Gods and religious institutions are apparently more resilient than weak Nepali governments.
Demoting Vishnu is very well written and structured, very clear and accessible. It provides fascinating detail and superb descriptions. The major festivals have already been described in the literature, but Mocko's focus on the interim period is totally new and timely. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand political, social, and religious change in Nepal.
