On Sunday, January 21, 2014, the letter
section of the Kantipur newspaper carried this small comment from one Taranath
Gautam of Kalanki:
“Prithivi Narayan Shah, who did not let
firangis come near him, has been portrayed in history by foreign writers like
Angelo, Guiseppe, Kirkpatrick, Hamilton, Wright, Oldfield, Vensitart and
others.” Then he went on to say (I am paraphrasing here, since I can’t remember
his exact words): These writers have come to portray as fact that “all males
lost their noses in Kirtipur”, and this has been passed down as history. But we
should examine more critically how Prithivi Narayan Shah, who wouldn’t let a
firangi come near him, may have been viewed by these writers.
Now this little letter, written in Nepali, was a shock of cold air. Reading the
line again in Nepali, I realized that “all males lost their noses” is a
colloquial way of saying “all men were humiliated.” But like all the other
Western educated people like me, I’d assumed that it was a literal fact, and
that Prithivi Narayan Shah had physically mutilated the Kirtipurians. But for
someone who was looking to unite, rather than divide, why would he alienate
this one town for no reason?
For the highly educated English, Italian
and lord knows which other gentlemen of which nationalities passing through to
capture Nepal’s history, this line apparently came to mean “all men literally
lost their noses.”
In other words, folks, this appears to be a
great historical fallacy of rather grave proportions that has remained
uncorrected and passed down as fact, a fallacy that has been bolstered by the
unquestioned supremacy of Western epistemology.
But if you repeat that sentence in Nepali,
you will immediately realize that it is likely a simple misunderstanding of a
linguistic metaphor, written down as fact by someone who didn’t speak the
language too well (or perhaps not at all).
Secondly, it seems Prithivi Narayan Shah
may have been rather justified in his advice (which can be seen to be
xenophobic, but in fact history has provide him to be right): firangis who
don’t understand your language can distort the meaning of words, and end up
writing “history” that will cause strife and bitterness for generations
afterwards. I've met Newars who thought that Prithivi Narayan Shah committed a war crime of grave proportions in Kirtipur--when in fact history seems to suggest he went around his conquest with the minimal amount of harm to human lives. Why else would he choose a day when all the Newar population was lying drunk on Indra Jatra for his Kathmandu takeover?
In other words, stay away from firangis
sounds like rather Divine Advice, with the benefit of hindsight, almost two
centuries after the grand old man’s demise.
The unbelievable number of firangis that
have come through and denigrated Prithivi Narayan Shah and his Gorkhali empire,
from academic institutions from Nowhere, USA to bright young sparks from India
with great ambitions to rule present day Nepal, all seem to prove one thing:
that man forged a nation of such unbelievable flexibility and loyalties no
firangi’s going to break up this one.
You gotta give to PNS—whatever he was
thinking in the 1700s, this one was unbelievably farsighted man who saw the
implications of his work centuries and centuries later. The flower garden stays
strong and it keeps flowering, despite (or perhaps because of) all attempts to
break it up.
A hundred
bouquets of flowers and a garland of flowers followed, but note Bairagi Kaila,
even in a Republican mood, has paid homage to the flower garden.
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