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Nepal's Former King Gyanendra Shah Celebrates His 79th Birthday

Deposed Nepali King Gyanendra Shah is greeted by a well-wisher at his private residence in Kathmandu, Nepal, on July 7, 2025, on his birthday. The 79-year-old deposed monarch comes to power for the second time in 2001 following the royal massacre where the entire family of his brother, Birendra Bir Bikram Shah, is assassinated. In 2005, Gyanendra Shah stages a royal coup, taking over all power, dissolving the parliament and cabinet, and ordering political leaders to be kept under house arrest. A year later, following a mass uprising, Gyanendra, unable to face international pressure, steps down from the post, reinstating the parliament. The successful movement, which changes the political landscape of the Himalayan nation buffered between India and China, is called the ''People's Movement II.'' Gyanendra, at the time, tries to suppress the movement by deploying all levels of security forces, resulting in the death of 18 people over a span of 19 days and injuring more than 4,000, which mainly includes children, according to the record of Human Rights Watch in 2006. It is then that the insurgent CPN-Maoist comes into the mainstream politics of Nepal, ending a decade-long insurgency by signing a comprehensive peace accord on November 21, 2006. Two years after abolishing the nearly two-and-a-half-century-old monarchy system, the Himalayan nation becomes a republic and a secular state on May 28, 2008. Within less than two decades into the new practice of governance, the Himalayan nation is now divided into two factions of pro and anti-monarchs. The monarch of the Himalayan nation follows the lineage of the Shah dynasty and is revered as an incarnation of the Hindu god Bishnu. With the abolishment of the monarchy, it becomes limited to a very small group, which now again is reemerging. (Photo by Subaas Shrestha/NurPhoto)

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