Nepal, March 11 -- The deafening toll of the bell in 2026 raises the spectre of numerical arrogance and the twilight of the counterweight that pushed the parliamentary democracy of the country into the long night of three decades in 1959. When the Nepali Congress came to dominate the parliament with a two-thirds majority back then, the entrenched elite of Kathmandu were alarmed. But when King Mahendra staged a royal-military coup, the regression was welcomed by that same elite, and a significant number of Congress lawmakers famously defected to join the regime of the coup-maker.

History, in the lap of the Himalayas, has a habit of folding back upon itself. After the creeping coup of King Gyanendra in 2002 culminated in the royal-military...