In Sri Lanka, two elected presidents, S.W.R.D. Bandaranayake and Ranasinghe Premadasa, have been assassinated. If one was to include Burma and Afghanistan as part of the Indian sub-continent, the list of assassinated leaders becomes even longer. But perhaps the most horrific assassination took place just the other day in the land-locked and bone-poor Himalayan kingdom of Nepal.

There, on the evening of June 1, during a family dinner in the Royal palace, the crown prince, Dipendra, gunned down his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, his brother, Nirajan, his sister, Princess Shruti, and several other close relatives, before turning the gun on himself. Altogether, 11 persons were killed. It was the worst killing of a royal family since the Russian Bosheviks eliminated the Ivanovs. Except that in this case, a royal killed his own kin and, in a few moments of madness, wiped out an entire line of a family that had ruled Nepal for 233 years.

The madness was apparently brought on by a bout of drunkenness, accompanied by the intake of some cocaine. It turned out to be a deadly combination. But the deeper cause of the tragedy was the firm opposition of crown prince Dipendra's parents to his courtship and intended marriage to Devyani, a beautiful aristocrat, but, in the Royal couple's eyes, a commoner. She was not suitable for their son, they felt, for another important reason: she was half-Indian. And Nepal has had a long love-hate relationship with India.

Nepal has also long prided itself on its independence. Sandwiched between two giants, India and China, it has had closer cultural and geographical ties with India. The official religion of Nepal is Hinduism. Indeed, Nepal is the only Hindu kingdom in the world, its ruler considered to be a reincarnation of Vishnu, the Hindu god of Preservation. There has been a great deal of inter marriage between Indians and Nepalis and the people of both countries can go into each other's countries without passports.

Historically, it was in the mid-18th and early 19th century, when the Indian sub-continent was in a state of turmoil following the collapse of the Mughal Empire, with different states and kingdoms jousting for dominance, that Nepal came into its own. Its famed and formidable Gurkha soldiers carved out a kingdom in what is now Nepal and much of the present north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Gurkha armies even made forays into Tibet and China.

The British, who were then trying to consolidate their hold over the Indian sub-continent, faced stout resistance from the Sikhs, who had their own kingdom, and the Gurkhas of Nepal. They took on the Gurkhas first and eventually defeated them in a series of closely-fought battles, culminating with Nepal becoming a quasi-British protectorate. Impressed by the fighting prowesss of the Gurkhas, Gurkha soldiers were taken into the British army, a practice that continues to this day (Gurkha soldiers also serve in the Indian army).

In 1923, the British recognised Nepal's independence. Though the Shah family has ruled over Nepal ever since the Gurkha ruler, Prithvi Narayan Shah, conquered the Kathmandu Valley in 1768, the real rulers of Nepal for over a century before 1951 were the Ranas, a family that had usurped power from the Royal family, after a series of blood feuds and assassinations.

In 1950, three years after India got its independence, the King of Nepal, King Tribhuvan, irked by the high-handedness of his Rana Prime Minister, fled to India with other members of his family and was given assylum there. A three year-old boy, Gyanendra, who was the closest in the line of Royal succession left in Nepal, was made King. His reign lasted just three months, before India intervened and put Tribhuvan back on the throne.

The same Gyanendra, by a quirk of fate, has become King once again, half a century later. Not too much is known about him, as he has remained out of the limelight in the intervening years. But he is a successful businessman, with considerable interests in a large tobacco company, as well as a share-holding in one of Kathmandu's leading five-star hotels.

His flamboyant son, the 25-year-old Paras, however, is notorious for being something of a hell-raiser. A few months ago, while speeding and drunk, he knocked down and killed one of Nepal's most popular musicians.

His royal connection prevented his prosecution. He remains an unpopular figure, yet by Nepal's convention of male primogeniture, he is due to be the next king of his country.

His son's unpopularity is the least of King Gyanendra's problems. The fallout from the two-man inquiry into the Royal massacre, which was made public on June 14, is his immediate worry. It has reiterated what was already known: the massacre was committed by a heavily inebriated and drugged Prince Dipendra. However, most Nepalese find it difficult to believe that their prince could have murdered his entire family. Hence, conspiracy theories abound, in which India and Pakistan figure prominently. Questions are also being asked as to how Paras and his mother were not among the killer’s victims and what happened to all the security staff in the palace. In such a period of uncertainty, with rumours flying around, a small spark could ignite trouble and instability.

India, in particular, has much at stake. With a 1,700-mile-long porous border with Nepal, its relations with the Himalayan kingdom have been uneasy even at the best of times. Tibet, being firmly under Chinese control, Nepal provides an essential buffer for India against China. But the Nepalese resent Indian domination of their economy. Quite a few of them are convinced that one day India will take over Nepal, just like it took over Sikkim. Indian tourists, who don't need passports or visas to travel to Nepal, and Indian businesses bring in most of Nepal's revenue - revenues that are threatened by the uncertainty following the royal killings. Nepal remains one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, with only a quarter of its population literate. Mounting corruption has also eaten away the little economic growth the country has been able to achieve. Since 1991, when a system of parliamentary democracy allied to a constitution monarchy on British lines, was ushered in, there have been five prime ministers and nine governments. The political instability and ongoing corruption has largely been responsible for an outlawed communist guerrilla movement that controls a large part of Nepal's countryside. Disillusionment with the political process and continuing poverty explains why an ideology that has been discarded all over the world, still appeals to many Nepalese.