Editing Nepal (section)

=== Dissent and Reform under the Rana State ===

The Rana regime was a patrimonial state in which the kings lived under what LeVine and Gellner call permanent house arrest, and it kept Indian democratic and nationalist ideas out of Nepal.<ref>LeVine and Gellner (2005), ''Rebuilding Buddhism'', pp. 24, 26–27.</ref> Besides banning conversion, it banned the public use of languages other than Nepali and the printing of books in them, which especially affected Newari; writers who used Newari were arrested.<ref>Chudal (2015), "Rahul Sankrityayan and the Buddhism of Nepal", pp. 74–75.</ref> The Theravada revival was therefore also a language movement, and its translations into Newari and Nepali were themselves a form of dissent. According to Kloppenborg, following Bechert, the Maha Bodhi Society combined the propagation of Buddhism with nationalistic and social-revolutionary ideals, which is why the Rana regime distrusted contacts with it in the 1930s and 1940s.<ref>Kloppenborg (1977), "Theravada Buddhism in Nepal", p. 302, after Bechert (1966).</ref> The regime's response was not uniformly hostile: Chudal reports that Prime Minister Chandra Shamsher contributed to the renovation of the Kindol Vihara at Swayambhu in 1923.<ref>Chudal (2015), "Rahul Sankrityayan and the Buddhism of Nepal", pp. 72–73. Chudal reads the other donor as Dharmaman Sahu, the Newar merchant of Lhasa.</ref>

Repression came in several waves, and the sources disagree about the dates. In November 1931 Das Ratna Tuladhar (Dhammalok) and eleven other Newars, among them the poets Jogbir Singh Kansakar and Chittadhar Hridaya, were fined and briefly imprisoned for "unorthodox religion."<ref>LeVine and Gellner (2005), ''Rebuilding Buddhism'', p. 41; Kloppenborg (1977), "Theravada Buddhism in Nepal", pp. 304–305.</ref> Kloppenborg and LeVine and Gellner report that Mahapragya (Mahaprajna) and five others were expelled to India in 1926, while Bechert and Hartmann place the arrest and expulsion of Mahapragya and Amritananda at Bhojpur in 1937, a date that Chudal's notes give as 14 January 1937.<ref>Kloppenborg (1977), "Theravada Buddhism in Nepal", p. 305; LeVine and Gellner (2005), ''Rebuilding Buddhism'', p. 43; Bechert and Hartmann (1988), "Observations on the Reform of Buddhism in Nepal", pp. 9, 11–12; Chudal (2015), "Rahul Sankrityayan and the Buddhism of Nepal", n. 18. The discrepancy is unresolved.</ref> In 1940 the government imprisoned Hridaya and Fatte Bahadur Singh over a Newari poetry collection, ''Nepali Vihara''; in prison Hridaya wrote his best-known work, ''Sugata Saurabha'', a verse life of the Buddha.<ref>Chudal (2015), "Rahul Sankrityayan and the Buddhism of Nepal", p. 75.</ref> On 30 July 1944 Prime Minister Juddha Shamsher ordered the monks to stop preaching, ordaining, and printing in Newari and to return to lay life, and those who refused had to leave; about a dozen monks went into exile in India.<ref>Kloppenborg (1977), "Theravada Buddhism in Nepal", p. 306; LeVine and Gellner (2005), ''Rebuilding Buddhism'', pp. 47–48.</ref> Buddhists in several countries protested, the Maha Bodhi Society offered the exiles hospitality in Sarnath, and the [[Sri Lanka]]n monk Bhikshu Sri Nivasa sheltered five of them at his rest house at Nautanva on the Indian side of the border.<ref>Kloppenborg (1977), "Theravada Buddhism in Nepal", p. 306; Chudal (2015), "Rahul Sankrityayan and the Buddhism of Nepal", n. 8. See [[Maha Bodhi Society]].</ref> The government's reply to the protests defended Hindu ''sanatana dharma'' and treated the conversion of "minors and women" as an offense; LeVine and Gellner add that the vihara of the anagarika Dharmashila at Pokhara became a meeting place for political opponents of the regime.<ref>LeVine and Gellner (2005), ''Rebuilding Buddhism'', p. 48.</ref> The same sources record that in 1941 four men were hanged for organizing the Praja Parishad, a political association; LeVine and Gellner do not present this as a Buddhist event.<ref>LeVine and Gellner (2005), ''Rebuilding Buddhism'', pp. 47, 100.</ref>