Tribhuvan

This article is about the former king of Nepal. There is also an international airport named after him in Nepal's capital Kathmandu and a university .

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Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah Dev (त्रिभुवन वीर विक्रम शाहदेव) (born June 30, 1906 , † March 13, 1955 in Zurich ) was King of Nepal from 1911 until his death .

Life

He ascended the throne at the age of five after his father Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah Dev died, with his mother effectively ruling. At the time, the monarchy was mainly a title, while the country was ruled by the powerful conservative Rana family who provided the prime minister, a position that until then had been hereditary.

During the First World War , tensions between the royal family and the Ranas became apparent. The Ranas wanted to support the British during the war, who controlled India , Nepal's southern neighbor. The queen mother, however, supported the army, which wanted to remain neutral. In order to win the support of the army, the Prime Minister Chandra Shamsher Rana blackmailed the young king: he held a gun to his mother's head and threatened to shoot her if the king did not send the troops to war. In the years that followed, the king was imprisoned in the palace and forced to follow the whims of the ranas, which included suppressing attempts at modernization and democratization .

Due to his open anti-Rana attitude, the king was repeatedly urged to abdicate by the Ranas. In November 1950, Tribhuvan managed to leave the palace together with most of the royal family and to find asylum in the Indian embassy. When the king was on his way to India, the Ranas put his grandson Gyanendra on the throne and quickly minted coins with his name. This attempt was accompanied by popular protests and the refusal of the international community, particularly Great Britain, to recognize the king.

When the Nepalese independence movement under the leadership of the Nepali Congress had brought large parts of the country under its control, Mohan Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana finally entered into a compromise with the king and the Nepali Congress, which would abolish the authoritarian Rana rule and introduce a constitutional one Monarchy had a goal. On February 18, 1951, King Tribhuvan returned from India as a constitutional monarch. In November of that year the prime minister resigned, ending the rule of the Rana in the country.

In the years that followed, Tribhuvan oversaw the establishment of a democratic government in Nepal. He died in Zurich in 1955, where he had received medical care.

literature

• Tribhuvana , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 21/1955 from May 16, 1955, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

predecessor	Office	successor
Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah Dev Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev	King of Nepal 1911–1950 1951–1955	Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev