A royal challenge for India

The country was monarchical from the beginning and the monarchy became absolute when a woman became the only man in the cabinet

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Society’s (NMMLS) controversial concept note should have spoken of monarchical, not presidential, government. If Napoleon could pick up the Crown of France from the gutter, Bokassa style himself Emperor of Central Africa, and Indira Gandhi coyly ask British reporters not to call her “Empress of India”, why should Narendra Damodardas Modi not be “Hindustan Naresh”?

Naresh is “King of Kings”, “Ruler of Man”. Nepalese monarchs, incarnations of Vishnu and absolute rulers of the world’s only officially Hindu state, were known as “Nepal Naresh” until it all ended in a bloodbath. The neighbourhood’s other precedents are