Six years of ethnonational upsurge

Khas-Arya supremacists consider the Divya Upadesh to be the manual of nationalism.

In an evocative coincidence, the Indra Jatra festival and the Constitution Day celebrations fall on the same date—September 19—this year. After September 25, 1768, the chariot festival had begun to signify the Gorkhali conquest while the celebration of the charter since 2015 has come to connote the consolidation of the victorious community's dominance over the polity of the country. It was during the Indra Jatra festivities, when King Jaya Prakash Malla was pulling the chariot of the living goddess, that the Gorkhali ruler attacked by stealth and captured the principal Malla kingdom of Nepal Valley. The conqueror then appropriated the crown, and allowed the procession to proceed with its sacred routine. In an exercise of renewing divine legitimisation, the Shah dynasty continued to patronise the ritual and turned the event into a substitute for the annual victory parade.