Portal:Nepal/Featured biography
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Featured biography 1
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Gyanendra Shah (born 7 July 1947) is the final monarch of Nepal, who ruled from 2001 until 2008, when the monarchy was overthrown. He briefly held the throne as a child between 1950 and 1951, when his grandfather Tribhuvan and his family fled to India for political reasons. His second reign, which began following the 2001 Nepalese royal massacre, was characterised by constitutional upheaval.
His brother, King Birendra, established a constitutional monarchy and delegated policy to a representative government. During Gyanendra's reign, the growing insurgency of the Nepalese Civil War disrupted representative elections. Following several election delays, Gyanendra suspended the constitution and assumed direct authority in February 2005, claiming that it was a temporary measure to suppress the Maoist insurgency after civil governments failed to do so. In April 2006, despite widespread opposition, he restored Nepal's previous parliament. He was deposed two years later by the first session of the Constituent Assembly, which declared the country the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal and ended the 240-year-old Shah dynasty. (Full article...)
Featured biography 2
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Bidya Devi Bhandari (Nepali: विद्यादेवी भण्डारी, pronounced [bid̚djadebi bʱʌɳɖaɾi]; born 19 June 1961) is a Nepali former politician who served as the second president of Nepal from 2015 to 2023. She formerly served as the minister of defence and minister of environment and population.
She is the first woman to hold the presidential office in the country. She served as the vice-chairperson of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) and was the chair of the All Nepal Women's Association before being elected president. Bhandari previously served as the Minister of Defence, the first woman to hold the office, from 2009 to 2011. She also served as the Minister of Environment and Population in 1997, and has been an active campaigner for environmental awareness and women's rights in Nepal. In June 2017, she visited the headquarters of the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland and met with the director general Inger Andersen to discuss enhanced collaboration on nature conservation and sustainable development. In 2016, Forbes placed her at number 52 on its list of the world's 100 most powerful women. She was dropped off the list in 2017. (Full article...)
Featured biography 3
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Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli (Nepali: खड्ग प्रसाद शर्मा ओली; born 22 February 1952), commonly known as K. P. Sharma Oli or simply K. P. Oli (English pronunciation: , pronounced [ˈkʰʌɽɡʌprʌsad̪ ˈoli]), is a Nepalese politician who is serving as the prime minister of Nepal since 15 July 2024.
Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) since 2014, he previously served as prime minister on two consecutive occasions, from October 2015 to August 2016 and from February 2018 to July 2021. He has been the Member of Parliament for Jhapa 5 since 2017. He previously served as an MP for Jhapa 6, Jhapa 2, and Jhapa 7. (Full article...)
Featured biography 4
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Bhimsen Thapa (Nepali: भीमसेन थापाlisten (August 1775 – 29 July 1839)) was a Nepalese statesman who served as the Mukhtiyar (equivalent to prime minister) and de facto ruler of Nepal from 1806 to 1837. He is widely known as the longest-serving prime minister of Nepal and was inducted into the "National heroes of Nepal" by King Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah.
Born into an ordinary military family in the Gorkha Kingdom, Bhimsen first came close to the Crown Prince Rana Bahadur Shah at an early age in 1785. In 1798, he was recruited as a bodyguard for the King by his father. Thereafter, he rose to influence after helping the exiled ex-King Rana Bahadur Shah engineer his return to power in 1804. In gratitude, Rana Bahadur made Bhimsen a Kaji (equivalent to a minister) of the newly formed government. Rana Bahadur's assassination by his stepbrother Sher Bahadur Shah in 1806 led Bhimsen to initiate investigations into the context in which he ordered the death penalty for ninety-three people popularly known as the 1806 Bhandarkhal massacre, after which he claimed the title of Mukhtiyar (equivalent to prime minister) himself. The death of King Girvan Yuddha Bikram Shah in 1816 at the immature age of 17, with his heir, King Rajendra Bikram Shah being only 3 years old, along with the support from Queen Tripurasundari (the junior queen of Rana Bahadur Shah) allowed him to remain in power even after Nepal's defeat in the Anglo-Nepalese War. After the death of Queen Tripurasundari in 1832, the intrigues of the newly adult King Rajendra, the conspiracies and infightings with the British envoy Brian Houghton Hodgson, Senior Queen Samrajya Laxmi Devi and the rival courtiers (especially the Kala Pandes, who held Bhimsen Thapa responsible for the death of Damodar Pande in 1804) finally led to his imprisonment on false charges of the murder of an infant prince and ultimately his death by suicide in 1839. (Full article...)
Featured biography 5
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Anuradha Koirala (born Anuradha Gurung on 14 April 1949) is a social activist and the founder of Maiti Nepal, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping victims of sex trafficking. She was appointed as 1st Governor of Bagmati Province from (17 January 2018 – 3 November 2019) by the Government of Nepal.
Koirala was the first child of the colonel Pratap Singh Gurung and Laxmi Devi Gurung. She belonged to an educated family and was educated at St Joseph Convent School. Before she started Maiti-Nepal, she spent 20 years as a teacher, teaching English in different schools in Kathmandu. (Full article...)
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Aniko, Anige or Araniko (Nepali: अरनिको, Chinese: 阿尼哥; 1245–1306) was one of the key figures in the arts of Nepal and the Yuan dynasty of China, and the artistic exchanges in these areas. He was born in Kathmandu Valley during the reign of Abhaya Malla. He is known for building the White Stupa at the Miaoying Temple in Beijing. During the reign of Jayabhimadeva, he was sent on a project to build a golden stupa in Tibet, where he also initiated into monkhood. From Tibet, he was sent further to northern China to work in the court of the emperor Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty, where he brought the trans-Himalayan artistic tradition to China. Araniko led a team of 80 artists to China proper and Tibet to make a number of pagoda-style buildings. In his later life, he renounced monkhood and started a family.
To some confusion in translation, his name is variously written as Arniko or Araniko in old texts. A mistake made by Baburam Acharya ascribed his Sanskrit name as Balabahu. However, later he contends that Aniko might possibly be the Chinese pronunciation for the Sanskrit name Aneka. It is also plausible that his name could mean AA Ni Ka, meaning "respectable brother from Nepal". (Full article...)
Featured biography 7
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Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala (Nepali: विश्वेश्वरप्रसाद कोइराला; 8 September 1914 – 21 July 1982), better known as B. P. Koirala (Nepali: बीपी कोइराला), was a Nepali revolutionary, political leader, and writer. He was the Prime Minister of Nepal from 1959 to 1960. He led the Nepali Congress, a social democratic political party. He was the grandfather of Bollywood actors Manisha Koirala and Siddharth Koirala, the elder brother of former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala and the younger brother of former prime minister Matrika Prasad Koirala.
Koirala was the first democratically elected and 22nd Prime Minister of Nepal. He held the office for 18 months before being deposed and imprisoned on the instruction of King Mahendra. The rest of his life was spent largely in prison or exile and in steadily deteriorating health.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest political personalities in Nepal, Koirala was a staunch supporter of democracy. He asserted that guarantees of individual liberty and civil and political rights alone were not sufficient in a poor country like Nepal, and that democratic socialism was the solution to Nepal's underdevelopment. (Full article...)
Featured biography 8
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Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (lit. 'the awakened one'), was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gayā in what is now India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order. Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar and reached parinirvana ("final release from conditioned existence").
According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, leading to freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His core teachings are summarized in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes ethical training and kindness toward others, and meditative practices such as sense restraint, mindfulness, dhyana (meditation proper). Another key element of his teachings are the concepts of the five skandhas and dependent origination, describing how all dharmas (both mental states and concrete 'things') come into being, and cease to be, depending on other dharmas, lacking an existence on their own svabhava).
While in the Nikayas, he frequently refers to himself as the Tathāgata; the earliest attestation of the title Buddha is from the 3rd century BCE, meaning 'Awakened One' or 'Enlightened One'. His teachings were compiled by the Buddhist community in the Vinaya, his codes for monastic practice, and the Sutta Piṭaka, a compilation of teachings based on his discourses. These were passed down in Middle Indo-Aryan dialects through an oral tradition. Later generations composed additional texts, such as systematic treatises known as Abhidharma, biographies of the Buddha, collections of stories about his past lives known as Jataka tales, and additional discourses, i.e., the Mahāyāna sūtras. (Full article...)
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Balbhadra Kunwar (30 January 1789 – 13 March 1823) was a Gorkhali military General, Commander and administrator in the Sikh Empire and the Kingdom of Nepal. He was highly praised for his military skill for the defence of Nalapani fort in the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814–1816). He was a captain in the Nepalese military and was tasked as commander to protect the forts of Dehradun. (Full article...)
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Bhrikuti Devi (Sanskrit: भृकुटी), known to Tibetans as Bal-mo-bza' Khri-btsun, Bhelsa Tritsun ("Besa" Nepal lit. 'Nepali consort') or simply Khri bTsun (lit. 'royal lady'), was a princess of the Licchavi kingdom in Nepal. In c.622 Bhrikuti became the first wife and queen of the king of Tibet, Songtsen Gampo (601–683 CE, reign 614-648) Bhrikuti was seen as an incarnation of Green Tara, and is credited for bringing Buddhism to Tibet, together with the Jowo Mikyo Dorje statue for which the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa was built. (Full article...)
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Prithvi Narayan Shah (Nepali: श्री ५ बडामहाराजाधिराज पृथ्वीनारायण शाह देव, romanized: Shri Panch Badamaharajadhiraj Prithvi Narayan Shah Dev; 7 January 1723 – 11 January 1775) was the last king of the Gorkha Kingdom and the first monarch of the unified Kingdom of Nepal (also referred to as the Kingdom of Gorkha). He is credited with initiating the unification of Nepal and relocating the royal seat of power to Kathmandu. He stands among the greatest Hindu rulers of the modern era and ranks among the finest sons ever produced by the Hindu race.
Prithvi Narayan Shah not only founded the modern nation of Nepal, but did so in a unique and original manner that ensured enduring international relevance. An eighteenth-century leader who recognized the potential inherent in mobilizing popular energies, Prithvi Narayan Shah remains a towering figure from whom twenty-first-century Nepalis can—and do—draw inspiration. His position in Nepalese history resembles that of George Washington in America: a visionary who was undeniably progressive within his historical context and who continues to inspire later-day compatriots, even as they confront challenges unimaginable two centuries ago. (Full article...)
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Amar Singh Thapa distinguished as Badakaji Amar Singh Thapa(Nepali: बडाकाजी अमर सिंह थापा), or Amar Singh Thapa The Elder, (also spelled Ambar Simha) also known by the honorific name Bada Kaji ("Senior Kaji") or Budha Kaji ("The Old Kaji"), was a Gorkhali military general, governor and warlord in the Kingdom of Nepal. He was the overall commander of the Nepal Army in the conquest of Western Provinces and authoritative ruler of Kumaon, Garhwal in the Kingdom of Nepal. He was referred by the King of Nepal to have been deployed as Mukhtiyar (equivalent to Prime Minister) of Western Provinces of Kumaon, Garhwal. He is often hailed as Living Tiger of Nepal (Nepali: ज्यूँदो बाघ; jyūm̐do bāgha) and led the Anglo-Nepalese War for the Gorkhali Army. Amarsingh Chowk Pokhara and Shree Amarsingh Model Higher Secondary School are named after Amar Singh Thapa. (Full article...)
Featured biography 13
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Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah Dev (Nepali: श्री ५ महाराजाधिराज त्रिभुवन वीर विक्रम शाह देव), (30 June 1906 – 13 March 1955) was King of Nepal. Born in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, he ascended to the throne at the age of five, upon the death of his father, Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah, and was crowned on 20 February 1913 at the Nasal Chowk, Hanuman Dhoka Palace in Kathmandu, with his mother acting as regent. At the time of his crowning, the position of monarch was largely ceremonial, with the real governing power residing with the Rana family. (Full article...)