It is difficult not to raise voice against this seemingly undemocratic move, the recent return of monarchy in Nepal, yet if King Gyanendra's motive of curbing the Maoist showdown holds any truth, I would invest my support for such a move. When the elected representatives are capable to do little, it is futile to justify a weak democratic setup. What scares me is thatsmall nations like Nepal could be completely engulfed with such insurgency in no time. In our own country, we have seen frail political will almost ruin the state of Kashmir.

Interestingly, many analysts interpret this as a clever move of the Himalayan nation to put India and China in a tug of war, for example analystRaja Mohan says,

Gyanendra has also sought to play the China card. After all no one can ignore the reality that Nepal is the geopolitical fulcrum of the Himalayas. Being the bridge between China's Tibet and India's Gangetic plains, Nepal has often sought to play India and China against each other.

Indeed it is difficult to rule outKing Gyanendra doing a MusharaffI still believe that it's early days to predict Nepal's future. As long as the monarch promises basic civic rights and stays on his agenda, I see no problem in the nation retreating to a democratic regime in a year's time, hopefully the Maoist nuisance that was wrecking the country would be gone by then.