जंग बहादुर राणा

Maharaja Jung Bahadur Rana  जंग बहादुर राणा)  Jung Bahadur Kunwar  जंग बहादुर कुँवर
 Knight Grand Cross (GCB),Knight Grand Commander (GCSI) (June 18, 1816 
Kathmandu,Nepal -February 25, 1877, borlang,gorkha ) was a ruler of Nepal and founder of the Rana dynasty of Nepal. His real name was Bir Narsingh Kunwar but he became famous by the name Jung Bahadur, given to him by Mathebar Thapa, his maternal uncle.
During his lifetime, he eliminated the factional fighting at the court, introduced innovations into the bureaucracy and the judiciary, and made efforts to "modernize" Nepal. He remains one of the most important figures in Nepalese history, though modern historians have also blamed Jung Bahadur for setting up the dictatorship that repressed the nation for more than 100 years and left it in a primitive economic condition. Others exclusively blame his nephews, the Shumsher Ranas, for Nepal's dark period of history. Rana rule was marked by tyranny, debauchery, economic exploitation and religious persecution.

His father, Bal Narsingh Kunwar (aka Bala Narsingh Kunwar) the son of Ranjit Singh Kunwar. His second wife, who was also Bhimsen Thapa's niece had given birth to seven sons in the period of eleven years; Jang Bahadur Rana, Bam Bahadur Rana, Badri Narsingh Kunwar, Krishna Bahadur Kunwar, Ranodip Singh Kunwar, Jagat Shumsher and Dhir Shumsher. Jung Bahadur Rana (formerly Kunwar), was the founder of Rana dynasty in Nepal., was in court the day Rana Bahadur Shah was murdered by his own half-brother Sher Bahadur Shah; as a retaliation Bal Narsingh killed him on the spot. For this action, he was rewarded with the position of Kaji, which was made hereditary in his family, also he was the only person allowed to carry weapons inside the court.


Jung Bahadur Kunwar joined the military service (1832–33) at the age of sixteen. As maternal grandson of Bhimsen Thapa, he lost his job and his property when the latter fell. After wandering in north India for several years, he returned to Nepal as a captain in the artillery in 1840. In November 1841, he was asked by the king to join his bodyguard, and in January 1842 he began work as Kaji in the palace. When his maternal uncle Mathbar Singh Thapa returned to power, Jung Bahadur rose with him. However Mathbar Singh disliked Jung Bahadur's ambition and had him removed to a lesser position on the staff of the heir apparent. When Fateh Jung Chautaria came to power, Jung Bahadur became fourth in the hierarchy of the coalition government and took pains to flatter the queen while showing no signs of ambition to general Gagan Singh Bhandari. A career opportunist, he was ready and waiting when the time came to act at the Kot massacre.
Queen Lakshmidevi, the favorite wife of King Rajendra Bikram was not pleased by the new prime minister. She conspired to eliminate Jung Bahadur Kunwar and elevate her son to the throne. The Basnyat Conspiracy—so called because many of its participants belonged to one of the last leading noble families, the Basnyat—was betrayed and its ringleaders were rounded up and executed in 1846 at Bhandarkhal Parva. A meeting of leading notables packed with Rana supporters found the queen guilty of complicity in the plot, stripped her of her powers, and sent her into exile in Banarasalong with King Rajendra. The king still had delusions of grandeur and began plotting his return from India. In 1847 Jung Bahadur informed the troops of the exiled king's treasonous activities, announced his dethronement, and elevated Rajendra's son to the throne as Surendra Bikram Shah (1847–81). King Rajendra Bikram was captured later that year in the Tarai and brought back as a prisoner to Bhadgaon, where he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
By 1850 Jung Bahadur had eliminated all of his major rivals, installed his own candidate on the throne, appointed his brothers and cronies to all the important posts, and ensured that major administrative decisions were made by himself as prime minister. At this point, he took the unprecedented step of travelling to Britain and France, leaving from Calcutta in April 1850 and returning to Kathmandu in February 1851. Although he unsuccessfully tried to deal directly with the British government while he was there, the main result of the tour was a great increase in goodwill between the British and Nepal. Recognizing the power of industrialized Europe, he became convinced that close cooperation with the British was the best way to guarantee Nepal's independence. From then on, European architecture, fashion, and furnishings became more prevalent in Kathmandu and among the Nepalese aristocracy in general.

Muluki Ain

As part of his modernization plans, Jung Bahadur commissioned leading administrators and interpreters of texts on dharma to revise and codify the legal system of the nation into a single body of laws, a process that had not been carried out since the seventeenth century under Ram Shah of Gorkha. The result was the 1,400-page Muluki Ain of 1854, a collection of administrative procedures and legal frameworks for interpreting civil and criminal matters, revenue collection, landlord and peasant relations, intercaste disputes, and marriage and family law. In contrast to the older system, which had allowed execution or bodily mutilation for a wide range of offences, the Muluki Ain severely limited—without abolishing—corporal punishment. For example, the old system gave wide scope for blood vengeance by aggrieved parties, such as cuckolded husbands, but the Muluki Ain restricted such opportunities. Substitutions included confiscation of property or prison terms. Torture to obtain confessions was abolished. Strict penalties were set down for the abusers of judicial positions and also for persons maliciously accusing judges of corruption. There were statutes of limitations for judicial actions. Caste-based differences in the degree of punishments remained throughout, with higher castes (for example, Brahmans) exempt from the corporal punishments and heavy fines that lower-caste members incurred for the same crimes. This distinction was in keeping with the traditional approach of the dharma shastras, or ancient legal treatises.


Control of Nepal

After Jung Bahadur's visit to Europe, he took steps to increase his hold over the country. He reduced the King of Nepal to a prisoner in his own palace, surrounded by agents of the Prime Minister being restricted and supervised at all times. No one outside the King's immediate family could see the King without permission from the Prime Minister. All communications in the name of the king were censored, and he was allowed to read only approved literature. In 1856 the king issued a royal decree (sanad) that formalized the dominance of the Kunwar family. There were three main provisions in this crucial document. First, the prime minister had complete authority over all internal administration, including civil, military, and judicial affairs, and all foreign relations, including the powers to make war and peace. Second, Jung Bahadur was made great king (maharajah) of Kaski and Lamjung districts, in effect serving as their independent ruler. The Shah king retained the title of Maharajadhiraja (Supreme King) and the right to use the honorific term Shrifive times with his name. The prime minister could use shri three times with his name. In this way, Jung Bahadur stopped short of taking the throne outright but elevated his family to a level second only to the royal house, which remained as a symbol of the nation. Finally, provisions were established for hereditary succession to the post of prime minister. Brothers and then sons would inherit the position in order of seniority. These provisions meant that the dictatorship of the Kunwar family, a virtual monarchy within the monarchy, would be passed down in the family for generations, with no legal mechanism for changing the government. Later, Jung Bahadur established official Rolls of Succession that ranked all his descendants in relation to their hereditary rights to the office of prime minister.

Jung Bahadur sealed the arrangement with the Shah Dynasty by arranging marriages between his heirs and the royal house. In 1854, his eldest sonJagat Jung (aged eight) married the eldest daughter (aged six) of king Surendra. In 1855 his second son married the second daughter of the king. The ultimate test was passed in 1857, when heir apparent Trilokya Bir Bikram married two daughters of Jung Bahadur. A son of this union, Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah, ascended to the throne in 1881.


Foreign relations

Nepal began to experience some successes in international affairs during the tenure of Jung Bahadur. To the north, relations with Tibet had been mediated through China since Nepal's defeat in 1792, and during the early nineteenth century embassies had to make the arduous journey to Beijingevery five years with local products as tribute to the Qing emperor. By 1854, however, China was in decline and had fallen into a protracted period of disturbances, including the Taiping Rebellion (1851–64), revolts by Muslim ethnic groups north of Tibet, and war with European powers. The Nepalese mission to Beijing in 1852, just after the death of the sixth Panchen Lama, was allegedly mistreated in Tibet. Because of this slight, the Nepalese government sent a protest letter to Beijing and Lhasa outlining several grievances, including excessive customs duties on Nepalese trade. In 1855 Nepalese troops overran the Kuti and Kairang areas. The Nepalese-Tibetan War lasted for about a year, with successes and failures on both sides, until a treaty negotiated by the Chinese resident and ratified in March 1856 gave Nepalese merchants duty-free trade privileges, forced Tibet to pay an annual tribute of 10,000 rupees to Nepal, and allowed a Nepalese resident in Lhasa. In return, Nepal gave up territorial gains and agreed that it, as well as Tibet, would remain a tributary state subject to China. As the Qing Empire disintegrated later in the century, this tributary status was allowed to lapse, and even Tibet began to shake off its subordination.
Prime-Minister of Nepal and Maharaja of Kaski & Lamjung, Jung Bahadur Rana was the first Rajah and Prime-Minister to get state honors in the court of Queen Victoria in 1850. Nepal and Britain became strong allies after Jung Bahadur's return from England visit.
The outbreak of disorder to the south also allowed the Nepalese army to take a more active role in international affairs. The Indian Rebellion of 1857, beginning in May 1857, was a series of related uprisings throughout north India that threatened to topple the power of the British East India Company. The uprisings began with widespread mutinies in the company's army and spread to include peasant revolts and alliances of the old Mughal aristocracy against the foreigner. Most of the major cities west of Bengal fell into rebel hands, and the aged Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II, was proclaimed the leader of a national revolution. Initially there was some fear in British circles that Nepal would side with the rebels and turn the tide irrevocably against the British East India Company, but Jung Bahadur proved to be a loyal and reliable ally. At that point, immediately following hostilities in Tibet, the army of Nepal had grown to around 25,000 troops. Jung Bahadur sent several columns ahead and then marched with 9,000 troops into northern India in December 1857. Heading an army of 15,000 troops, he fought several hard battles and aided the British in their campaigns aroundGorakhpur and Lucknow. The prime minister returned to Nepal triumphantly in March 1858 and continued to aid the British in rooting out "rebels" who had been dislocated during the chaos and sought refuge in the Terai.
After the Sepoy Rebellion had been crushed and Britain had abolished the British East India Company and taken direct control of India in 1858, Nepal received a reward for its loyalty. Western sections of the Tarai that had been ceded through the Sugauli Treaty in 1816 were returned. Henceforth, the British were firm supporters of Jung Bahadur's government, and Nepal later became an important source of military recruits for the British army.
In 1858 King Surendra bestowed upon Jung Bahadur Kunwar the honorific title of Rana, an old title denoting martial glory used by Rajput princes in northern India. He then became Jung Bahadur Rana, and the later prime ministers descended from his family added his name to their own in honor of his accomplishments. Their line became known as the house of the Ranas. Jung Bahadur remained prime minister until 1877, suppressing conspiracies and local revolts and enjoying the fruits of his early successes. He exercised almost unlimited power over internal affairs, taking for his own use whatever funds were available in the treasury. He lived in the high style of an Anglicised native prince in the British Raj, although unlike the Indian princes he was the ruler of a truly independent nation, an ally rather than a subordinate of the British.








Jung Bahadur Rana 

 A rather lopsided and, at times, over-generalized characterization of Jung Bahadur Rana prsists in Nepali historical memories.
One thinks of him as a dictator, a tyrant, a killer, a naïve and power-hungry potentate devoid of reason and vision.
He is conceived of as a mastermind and chief actor of the bloody Kot Massacre of 1846.
This projection, hailed as a truth of Nepali history, has eclipsed others aspects of his life and deeds for which Nepali people should remember him.
Quite a good deal of the country’s legal, educational, and administrative systems bear his legacy.
The nation relies, for its legal system, on the foundation of Muluki Ain (1854) that he laid down.
His and his descendants’ private palaces serve as the modern-day Nepali regimes to house their administrative offices.
Nepal’s education system has its genesis in his time. And for keen onlookers, his and his descendents’ portraits reverentially hang on the walls and corners of most of the star hotels and resorts of the country.
His statue, with energetic ferocity in his countenance, stands at the corner of the Bhadrakali military parade grounds where he seems to be about to gallop off to Singha Durbar.
Considering these remnants, I sometimes fall to the illusion that he is still a ruler of this country.
But he has been dead since February 25, 1877 (Falgun13, 1933 BS). On the occasion of his 135th death anniversary, I attempt to unearth some less applauded facets of his life.
Jung Bahadur Rana arrests my imagination for more reasons than one.
This chief protagonist of nineteenth century Nepali history is not just a tyrant.
He is a metaphor of power, bravery, courage, valor, nationalism and oriental mysticism whose life, deeds, and antics sound like fairytales to modern readers.
When he went on a visit to colonial Britain, he first globalized this tiny nation. He amazed and awed westerners with his oriental image.
To subscribe to John Whelpton’s Janga Bahadur in Europe, he struck every European’s fancy with his “strange and gorgeous sight,” generated curiosity in his onlookers who started doubting as to “Arabian Nights being a work of fiction.
” “What if,” the Britishers wondered about him and his party “they have tent packed up in turban big enough to cover a regiment! What if they have arrived here flying through the air on a magic carpet?
” The Britishers considered him to be an “incarnation from the Arabian Nights... attended by the fiery Pari Banou... journeying with passports covered with hieroglyphics and stars.
” The Englishmen and their memsahibs saw in him “aspirations of a great emperor” and found him “not subservient like an Indian.”
Numerous incredible facts envelop Jung Bahadur’s biography. I am thinking of Padma Jung Bahadur Rana’s Life of Maharaj Sir Jung Bahadur (1980) which records such facts, some of them really astonishing.
When he was eight, he clambered upon the horse which galloped off before he could hold the bridle. The horse took flight but he was left uninjured. About the same age, he caught the head of the serpent in his father’s garden in Thapathali.
His father screamed in terror at this sight but the serpent made its way without harming him.
At ten, he jumped into the river Bagmati, then in flood, and not being able to swim was carried away by the current long way off before he was rescued.
While in Chitwan, a king cobra is said to have been standing half erect and spreading its hood over his head as a protective umbrella when he was lying asleep on a village ground adjoining the forest.
He fought with a wild buffalo at the royal palace of Basantpur and tamed a leopard.
In 1841, he leaped on horseback into the Trishuli River. Other stories concern his seizure of a wild elephant single-handedly, his leap off from the Dharahara, and his jump into a well, and so on.
Not all of such anecdotes are concocted myths. John Whelpton believes that there is a “core of truths to the anecdotes” and historian Rishikesh Shaha has confirmed some of them. Diamond Shumsher Rana in his novels Seto Bagh and Grihaprabesh makes recurrent references to these “anecdotes” as real happenings.
Life was hardly easy for Jung Bahadur. Since his childhood to adolescence and to old age, he underwent several life and death situations and lived a life fraught with ambushes, risks and danger.
After Premier Bhimsen Thapa’s fall in 1837, Jung’s property had been expropriated by the state and he was left in Kathmandu with virtually nothing of his own.
He took to gambling in this frustrating period of time.
And then when he was in utter debt, he left Kathmandu to make some fortune in the Terai and tried his luck in Varanasi.
Failed, he lived with Tharus in Chitwan. He comes past a lot of such hardships before he reappears in the Nepali court.
Jung Bahadur is a metonymy of Nepali nationalism. He was, arguably, more of a nationalist than any of his successors from Rana Udip to Madhav Kumar Nepal.
A fascinating account of Jung Bahadur’s commitment to nationalism was carried out by Surendra Paudel in Nagarik daily two years ago. Paudel’s argument in the essay is that history has portrayed Jung Bahadur as a devotee of Britain.
He is projected as an ally of imperialism and expansionism but he was a true nationalist. Actually, “he was never a devotee of Britishers as has been portrayed by history.
His history should be rewritten.” (Nagarik, May 2, 2009) Indeed, he had “Junge” pillars built along the major borders which are being displaced now. And he retained land ceded to British by the earlier regime.
In Nepali history, only three prime ministers, as dictators or statesmen, have been able to rule for three decades: Bhimsen Thapa, Jung Bahadur Rana and Chandra Shumsher.
The rest of Nepali history is one of instability, formation and fall of governments, intrigues, and foreign dominance in internal affairs.
For example, in twenty one years of democratic exercise since 1990, Nepal has had about eighteen governments.
Hardly any government has lasted more than three years. (We have hardly had Jhalanath Khanal as new prime minister and talks of toppling him down have already begun).
And in the two decades of democratic era, we had more border encroachments than ever, our nationalism became just rhetoric, and our foreign policies went weaker.
It is in awareness of these realities that I consider Jung Bahadur Rana worth commemorating today..
                                                                     -Ranjit Shumsher Rana