Nepali people

While people have lived for centuries in what is now Nepal, Nepal has only been a country for about 300 years. Independent hill states ruled the area until the late 18th century, when Prince Prithvi Narayan Shah united the states to become what is now Nepal. The nation became a constitutional monarchy in 1950, before slipping into a dictatorship eight years later. Demonstrations in the late 1980s against oppressive rule resulted in multiparty elections in May 1991. During the sixteen years of democracy, Nepal suffered an ineffective bureaucracy, corruption and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor. In 1996, the Maoists started a war against the central government in Rolpa, a village in Western Nepal. The war grew rapidly and killed over 13000 people in 10 years. In June 2001, the popular King Birendra and much of the royal family was assassinated in the palace by a gunman, apparently then crown prince Dipendra, who is believed to have commited suicide afterwards. Public grief and conspiracy theories about the unknown motivation of the massacre paralyzed the country for several weeks. The late king's brother, Gyanendra, became the king after that. In October 2002, Gyanendra dismissed Sher Bahadur Deuba’s government and formed several under the leadership of people of his choice. In February 2005, he dissolved the third government that was formed under the leader of his choice, and formed a government under his own chairmanship. Gyanendra, was had been suspected of plotting the Royal Massacre in 2001, became more infamous after his government enforced strict laws and started treating citizen inhumanely. After three weeks of intense revolution in April 2006, Gyanendra was forced to retreat and reinstate the parliament that had been dissolved before he dismissed the Deuba government in 2002.
Immediately after democracy was reinstated in April, the Maoists announced a cease-fire. The government, under Girija Prasad Koirala, responded with their announcement of a cease-fire. After about 6 months of peace talks, the head of the government, Girija Prasad Koirala, and the chairperson of Maoist party, Puspa Kamal Dahal, aka Prachanda, signed a peace agreement on 21 October 2006. The Polls for the Constituent Assembly is due to happen by mid-June, and this Assembly is to decide the future of Nepal’s monarchy.