Between iconoclasm and sycophancy

To deny Prithivi Narayan Shah’s vision or methods is to misunderstand him, and by extension, ourselves.

Every Prithvi Jayanti, Nepal does not merely commemorate the birth of King Prithvi Narayan Shah; it reenacts an argument about how nations ought to remember their modern-day founders, which is increasingly (and quite predictably) polarised. On one side are those who insist that Shah must be revered without qualification—as the reunifier of the nation, the architect of modern statehood, and thus a figure whose legacy must remain untouched by criticism (which is often characterised as foreign-funded). On the other side are those who approach him almost exclusively through the language of violence, conquest and cruelty, reducing a complex historical figure to a moral indictment. Between these two camps of sycophancy and iconoclasm, reason itself often disappears. This demonstrates an inability to hold praise and criticism together without collapsing into moral absolutes. In this race between veneration and vilification, history, proportion, balance and reason have constantly emerged as the ultimate losers.