| Cremations at temple | Music | 00:00 |
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| BORMANN: At the temple of Pashaputinath, Hindu pilgrims send their dead to the spiritual world. | 00:15 |
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| The people of Nepal recall the day, not so long ago, when nine members of their Royal family were dispatched from here. Now, the survivors of that regal dynasty have melted away. | 00:26 |
| Temple | Long lived the Royals; they’ve been absolute rulers here for most of the last 240 years. But what’s happened in Nepal in the last few months has been a revolution in every sense of the word. | 00:44 |
| File footage. King at military parade | Banished, is the world’s only Hindu monarch, driven from the Palace by his own subjects. | 00:6 |
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| The Nepalese were fed up with the King who saw himself as a God. | 01:06 |
| Prachanda | PRACHANDA: There is not any sympathy among the masses to the monarchy. BORMANN: Now the Nepalese are under the spell of a new leader | 01:13 |
| File footage. Prachanda | who compares himself with some of history’s most notorious megalomaniacs. He’s a man whose message seems irresistible, even though he’s responsible for the deaths of thousands of his own people. | 01:20 |
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| PRAMADA: We could be heading for a lot of trouble, | 01:40 |
| Pramada | we could even be heading for a civil war, I don’t know. | 01:43 |
| Soldiers march | Music | 01:46 |
| Lake at Pokhara |
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| BORMANN: The breathtaking beauty of the Annapurna range masks a shocking event that was largely unreported in the outside world. | 02:03 |
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| The people here had lived in peace for generations. And yet one night early in 2004, they turned on each other with incredible brutality. | 02:15 |
| Maoist DVD night vision and rebels walking, gathering | Music | 02:26 |
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| KUNDA: It was a human wave attack which is a strategy they had perfected. | 02:31 |
| Kunda/Night vision | You go in with lots of villagers shouting slogans and you know with flaming torches, and actually out in the open just to put psychological pressure on the defenders. | 02:35 |
| Maoist rebels from Maoist DVD | BORMANN: The village of Beni had been surrounded by 5,000 men and women rag tag fighters. Like every other operation, the attack was to be filmed for propaganda purposes. They were followers of the doctrine of Chinese revolutionary Chairman Mao -- their quest was a communist takeover of Nepal. | 02:49 |
| Attack on Beni | Over the next ten hours, police posts and government buildings were attacked and dozens of officials murdered. | 03:11 |
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| KUNDA: The fighting went on all night. So the idea was to | 03:20 |
| Kunda. Super: | Attack, paralyse the government machinery, give a very big blow to the morale of the security forces guarding the district headquarters, and then move out. | 03:25 |
| Beni town/People | BORMANN: The Maoist tactics were employed in dozens of attacks across Nepal in a ten year insurgency. | 03:37 |
| Beni Police Station | Today, the police station at Beni has been rebuilt. The town bares few scars, although the people still suffer. | 03:44 |
| Bormann walks with Krishna | Krishna Lal Shrestha was a caretaker on that night, when mortars rained from the sky. | 03:55 |
| Bormann and Krishna/ Krishna shows injury | KRISHNA: When I stepped out the door I was hit by a bullet on my back and another one on my arm, and then I fell down. After that the bomb blasted my leg. I am very depressed , but what can I do? What happened, happened. | 04:02 |
| Town people | BORMANN: The Maoist insurgency was to change Nepal forever -- it was to be the beginning of the end of the monarchy. | 04:26 |
| King Gyanendra walks | King Gyanendra suspended parliament and wound back democratic reforms. He had now turned other moderate Nepalese people against him. | 04:35 |
| Pramada and Bormann at shelter | PRAMADA: It’s a shelter for about 20 girls. Right now we have around 17, and most of the kids are from difficult backgrounds… | 04:48 |
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| BORMANN: In one of the poorest and least developed nations on earth, Pramada Shah takes me to a children’s shelter run by her welfare agency. | 04:57 |
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| PRAMADA: Either they’ve been displaced by the conflict or they’ve lost parents, or some of them have been abused themselves or they’re victims of domestic violence. So they come from different backgrounds and some of them are just pure and simple needy. | 05:05 |
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| BORMANN: And there’s something else she’s known for. Pramada Shah is a member of the former Royal family, having married King’s Gyanendra’s nephew. | 05:20 |
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| PRAMADA: Whenever I thought of sovereignty, I thought of the monarchy, | 05:32 |
| Pramada. Super: | and the people, I think, did look at them as the foundation of security for Nepal being Nepal. Now at this point I’m not even sure we’re going to be Nepal. | 05:37 |
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| Music | 05:47 |
| Royals’ funerals | BORMANN: The Maoists were intent on the destroying the monarchy, but the family were doing a good job of that themselves. | 05:53 |
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| Gyanendra had only come to power after his brother the King was shot dead along with eight other Royals on one night in 2001. | 06:02 |
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| The gunman was the King’s own son, a drunken Crown Prince Dipendra, upset because he couldn’t marry the woman he loved. Dipendra turned the weapon on himself and died two days later. | 06:15 |
| Pramada/ Funerals | PRAMADA: And he had threatened to do this and when he actually did it, then we realised, my god, maybe we should have taken him seriously, but no one takes those threats seriously I guess. | 06:32 |
| Maoist DVD footage | BORMANN: In the countryside, the Maoist insurgency was taking hold. Children were taken away to re education camps, their headmasters murdered. Anyone who didn’t think the same way as the Maoists was executed. | 06:49 |
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| Music | 07:05 |
| Prachanda from Maoist DVD footage | BORMANN: Behind them was a shadowy and enigmatic figure so mysterious, rumours suggested he didn’t actually exist. But he was real and he called himself Prachanda -- meaning, ‘the fierce one’. | 07:11 |
| Prachanda and Bormann walk up stairs | He told me he never actually fought himself. It turned out that the man calling every shot of Nepal’s class war was a snappy dressing middle class teacher and father of three. | 07:29 |
| Prachanda i/v | BORMANN: Well it’s 2008, do you think what the world really needs now is another communist country | 07:41 |
| Super: | PRACHANDA: Right now we are not fighting for socialism or communism, as some people think like that. We are fighting against feudalism, to establish a democratic republic. | 07:46 |
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| BORMANN: But 13,000 of you own country men and women have died. That’s some price to pay isn’t it? | 07:56 |
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| PRACHANDA: These 13,000 people, even though we are sorry for that, but we feel that in comparison in history to fight against feudalism, it is not a high price, you know. | 08:02 |
| Prachanda ‘morph’ as Stalin | Music | 08:18 |
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| KUNDA: Well we decided to morph Prachanda into Stalin, because of his statements in which he said that the media | 08:22 |
| Prachanda and Bormann at computer | should be controlled and he threatened one particular newspaper for being critical of the party. BORMANN: Kunda Dixit is a publisher and outspoken commentator, and someone who isn’t about to be intimidated. | 08:30 |
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| BORMANN: I don’t think Stalin liked to be made fun of, do you think Prachanda does? | 08:42 |
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| KUNDA: (laughs) Um, no Prachanda is OK actually, he seems to have a sense of humour. He’s probably one of the few Maoists in the politburo who actually laughs. But he’s also a guy who told us in an interview ‘If you’re going to eliminate anyone, don’t torture them, just put a gun on his temple and shoot him’. | 08:49 |
| Parliament building | BORMANN: After laying down their arms, the Maoists won more seats than anyone in April’s elections. Now, the revolutionary has come in from the cold, | 09:08 |
| Prachanda in parliament | and in a truly extraordinary turn of events, Prachanda ‘the fierce one’ finds himself the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Nepal. The Maoists wasted no time eliminating the biggest enemy of all, | 09:19 |
| King | the symbol of everything they despised. The King had his marching orders. BORMANN: How do you think the King is feeling right now? | 09:35 |
| Prachanda. Super: | PRACHANDA: He may have some sort of self critical feeling, I think so. Monarchy was the symbol of feudalism and autocracy and we wanted to have a democratic republic to empower the masses of people, you know, there are so many kinds of oppression was there. | 09:45 |
| King at ceremony | KUNDA: So what they couldn’t achieve with a very bloody war, they achieved in a very short time, relatively non violently, to overthrow and sideline the king. | 10:06 |
| Kunda. Super: | A lot of anti Maoists also voted for the Maoists. There was the fact that, OK, if we send them to government, maybe they won’t go back to the jungle. | 10:15 |
| Royal Palace | BORMANN: Kathmandu’s Royal Palace remains heavily guarded, but its King slipped away in the middle of the night. | 10:24 |
| Gyanendra’s estate | This is Gyanendra’s new home -- a hunting lodge in the foothills of the city. Officials held an open house just before his former royal highness moved in. They wanted to flaunt the modesty of his new abode. | 10:32 |
| Crowds outside estate for birthday wishes | On the day we called, it was Gyanendra’s birthday, and a steady stream of loyalists turned up at the gates to leave their wishes. But the last King of Nepal has not been seen in public since he lost his job. PRAMADA: He’s relaxed, he’s not | 10:48 |
| Pramada. Super: | doing anything covert or you know he’s not starting an underground movement as people would like to think. So he seems to be relaxed and watching the situation and staying back. What else can he do? | 11:06 |
| Pramada at women’s meeting | BORMANN: Her family no longer Royal, Pramada Shah is learning live with new realities. In her job running a welfare agency, she encounters the new Maoist women’s minister. | 11:22 |
| Chitwan scenery/ People | Music | 11:38 |
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| BORMANN: The foothills of the Chitwan region in the south of the country seem as far as you can get from the Maoist makeover in Kathmandu. The farmers here gave up sons and daughters to fight in the revolution. Prachanda’s People’s Liberation Army is still in their midst. | 11:46 |
| Driving to camp | We drove deep into remote country to visit one of dozens of remaining camps. | 12:12 |
| PLA camp/ Soldiers | Weapons have been confiscated by UN, but this is still a military force by any other measure. | 12:25 |
| Soldiers train | Maoist leaders might have relinquished their armed struggle for suits in parliament, but it’s a message that apparently hasn’t got through to these foot soldiers. | 12:36 |
| Ranjana | On the sidelines, 22 year old Ranjana, a fighter since she was 17, a young women convinced there’s still a war to fight. | 12:50 |
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| RANJANA: With my full capacity, I’ll dedicate my life. My health is not good, so I’m not fighting at the moment. But once I’m ready then I’ll die for the people and the country. | 13:01 |
| Soldiers train | BORMANN: The Maoist leadership has pledged to disband these camps and rehabilitate the people. But for now they’re here in case Prachanda needs them again. This is a nation of two armies -- these Maoist fighters and the Nepalese regular army they battled for ten years. | 13:25 |
| Kunda. Super: | KUNDA: The Maoists are now finding it more difficult than we thought to make a transition from being a violent guerrilla force who killed anyone who didn’t agree with them to being a legitimate political party that believes in non violence and pluralism and tolerates dissent. | 13:50 |
| Temples against sky | Music | 14:08 |
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| BORMANN: They inherit a Nepal ravaged by conflict. The insurgency kept many tourists away -- they’re the biggest source of foreign income here. Prachanda has pledged to bring the visitors back, dispense with the ideology, and face a few twenty first century practicalities about running a country. | 14:13 |
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| PRACHANDA: We have empowered all those oppressed people | 14:39 |
| Prachanda. Super: | and right now we are in the position that we can mobilise the masses of people to rebuild this country. BORMANN: So is it fair to say the tiger changed its stripes? PRACHANDA: Mmm you can say that yeah. | 14:44 |
| Temple puja | Music | 15:00 |
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| BORMANN: After two and half centuries, the survivors of the ruling Shah dynasty have passed on into a life of civilian obscurity. Their demise was as much their own making, as the onslaught of Maoists who won influence first by the gun, then by the ballot box. From this kingdom in the clouds, comes the world’s newest republic. |
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| Nepal skies | Music | 15:30 |
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| Reporter: Trevor Bormann Camera: Wayne McAllister Editor: Bryan Milliss | 15:40 |