The garden is among over half-a-dozen historically significant wings and squares inside the Malla-era palace that will be restored to their past glory and opened for public viewing, said Jal Krishna Shrestha, spokesperson of the Ministry of Culture. [break]
“The Hanumandhoka Durbar Development Committee constituted a year ago is currently doing the homework to open up some seven squares and Bhandarkhal garden,” said Shrestha.
All sections of the palace apart from the wing that houses the Hanumandhoka Palace Museum have been out of bounds for commoners for over one-and-a-half centuries.
Those sections of the palace were inaccessible to the public both during the Rana regime and thereafter when the palace became the property of the country´s kings. But after the abolition of monarchy in 2008, the ownership was transferred to the government.
“The homework for opening more of the palace to the public is in accordance with the government´s policy of increasing the public´s access to historically important places,” said Shrestha.
BHANDARKHAL MASSACRE
The infamous Bhandarkhal massacre that took place in 1846 preempted a conspiracy hatched by Queen Laxmidevi in collusion with members of some powerful Basnyat families of the time to oust Jung Bahadur from the premiership, which he had assumed earlier that year after staging the Kot massacre.
Some 23 members of the nobility were massacred at Bhandarkhal garden by Jung´s men.
The Bhandarkhal massacre was engineered to finish off Jung Bahadur´s potential political enemies who escaped the Kot massacre at Hanumandhoka Palace armory in September 1946. Nearly four dozen members of the nobility were slain at the Kot.
The Bhahdarkhal massacre culminated in the exile of King Rajendra and his queen and kick-started 104 years of autocratic Rana rule.
Despite the historical significance of the Kot massacre, the site where it occured will not be open to the public as there is no structure there to help visitors visualize that historically and politically important event.
“What remains at the site of the massacre is a dilapidated one-storey structure that houses an office for Nepal Army soldiers guarding Hanumandhoka Palace,” Shrestha said.
At the Kot, soldiers to this day offer goat sacrifice during Dashain and Chaite Dashain festivals, according to culture expert Satya Mohan Joshi.
“Before the Rana oligarchy ended, even civil servants were required to appear at the Kot with goats during the festivals. The loyalty of those who did not show up would immediately come under question,” he added.
But after 1951, the Kot was closed to civil servants as well.
BHANDARKHAL GARDEN
The Bhandarkhal garden, however, retains many magnificent structures that have survived 165 years of oblivion.
A pit that used to be a pond in the past and spaces where flowers used to sway in the breeze blowing in through the palace´s tri-windows and penta-windows rich in oriental woodcraft remain to this day.
“At the Bhandarkhal garden is a replica of the sleeping Vishnu to be seen at Budhanilkantha. And there are scripts in various languages sculpted into the stone. During the Malla era, only those who could read all the scripts were labeled learned,” said Joshi who has personally visited Bhandarkhal garden and the squares inside the palace.
“The squares are artistically magnificent,” Joshi added. Oriental woodcraft and sculpted stonework seen in the squares cannot be found even in China today, according to Joshi.
The name Bhandarkhal derives from the garden´s use in the past as the state treasury, said Saraswati Singh, chief of Hanumandhoka Palace Museum.
“All Malla-era palaces in the Valley have gardens named bhandarkhal as they served as the state treasury,” Singh said.
At the Bhandarkhal garden at Hanumandhoka Palace, two containers in which state treasures were safely stored during the Malla era remain to this day, Singh added.
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