The Last Newar of Chuhadi

The Sep/Oct 1993 of Himal had an article on missionaries, which referred to Capuchin priests and Kathmandu Christians who were forced to m igrate to Bettiah after Prithvi Narayan Shah's conquest of the Valley. Theodore Riccardi, Jr. of Columbia University provides an account of that relocation in an essay written a few years back in honour of Luciano Petech, the respected historian of Nepal, Tibet and China. The photograph is by Todd Lewis.

IN 1769, the Capuchin priest, Padre Giuseppe da Rovato, led a small band of Nepali Christians to their new home in the plains of India. Most of them were Newars from Kathmandu Valley who remained loyal to their new religion and to the small group of priests who had tried, in vain as it turned out, to bring Christianity to inhospitable territory. The priests and their converts had been c aught in the web of intrigue and warfare that had beset the Nepal Valley for more than a decade. Prithvi Narayan Shah, King of Gorkha, had taken Kathmandu and Patan, and Bhadgaon was soon to fall. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he had been convinced that the Christians be allowed to go. The mission, which had begun in 1707, had come to an end. It was a failure, partly because of Rome's inability to see the difficulties of conversion in Kathmandu and Lhasa and partly due to the political upheaval and military conquest that made it impossible for the missionaries to function.