Ex-Nepal king calls on Yogi, gets Kumbh logo as gift
LUCKNOW /KATHMANDU: Former Nepalese king Gyanendra Shah on Monday paid a courtesy call on Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who has long-standing ties with the erstwhile royal family, with aides describing it as a personal meeting.
Adityanath is also head priest of Gorakhpur’s Gorakhnath Mutt, which is revered by the former royals of Hindu-majority Nepal. The Nath sect to which Adityanath belongs has a huge following in Nepal.
“The two have known each other for decades and it was a personal meeting between them. The visiting dignitary is on a private visit to Lucknow,” Awanish Awasthi, Uttar Pradesh’s principal secretary (information), told HT.
The chief minister’s office tweeted a photo of the meeting during which Adityanath is believed to have invited Gyanendra to visit the Kumbh Mela to be held in Allahabad in 2019.
Adityanath presented a logo of the mela to the former king and gifted him a white shawl, which is believed to destroy all types of pain and agony, according to Hindu mythology.
Gyanendra, who is accompanied by his wife Komal and daughter Prerana, is staying at a hotel in Lucknow and it could not immediately be ascertained if he would visit Gorakhpur on the occasion Makar Sankranti, which is on January 14. Former Nepalese king Birendra, who was assassinated in 2001, regularly visited the Gorakhnath Mutt during the Makar Sankranti festival. In 1992, Birendra drove from Kathmandu to the Gorakhpur mutt. “King Gyanendra had orga nised a Virat Hindu Mahasammelan a few years back in Nepal and had specially invited Adityanath. The Mutt is located in an area on the India-Nepal border and Adityanath commands great respect among the erstwhile Nepalese royals, who as Gorkhas trace their origins to Guru Gorakshnath, who founded the Nath monastic order in the Himalayan region,” an official said.
As the Gorakhpur MP, Adityanath made occasional visits to Nepal, during which he had spoken about the restoration of the country’s status as a Hindu kingdom. Gyanendra was Nepal’s last king. He stepped down in 2008 after political parties voted to abolish the 239-year-old monarchy. Before leaving for Lucknow, Gyanendra visited religious sites at Nepalgunj and Dang in Nepal . Sources in Kathmandu said Gyanendra will spend at least two days in UP, where he is expected to visit some religious sites. Adityanath is believed to have strong connections with Hindu groups in Nepal that have campaigned for restoring a Hindu state.
In 2015, he wrote a letter to then PM Sushil Koirala to ban cow slaughter, stop conversions and declare Nepal a Hindu state.At the time, Nepal’s Constituent Assembly was finalising a new constitution, which made Nepal a secular, rather than a Hindu, state. Adityanath also visited Kathmandu in 2016 for the Virat Hindu Sammelan, where he declared Gyanendra the ‘Hindu Samrat’. He had said, “We have to go to the people and make them aware that without the rule of the Shahs, there would not be Nepal, one single Nepal.”