Talking to media persons at the Parliament House premises on Monday, Dhakal said that the history will not be erased by the headlines made on the board and the criticism levelled against him.<\/p>\n
He clarified that he was not suggesting that the name of Singha Durbar should be changed. <\/p>\n
He said that the use of the word “wish I would” during the change was unnecessarily raised. <\/p>\n
‘Hidden histories are not erased by a headline made from a cut or a board, or a joke made to me. Did I mean “I do”? Why is there so much interest in the word ‘I wish I would’ at the time of that change?” he asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dhakal said that he had studied the historical aspects related to the construction of Singha Durbar and gave his statement on the basis of that.<\/p>\n
According to him, the palace was constructed for personal use by spending huge amount of money from the then state coffers and there was a history of exploitation of workers in course of construction. <\/p>\n
‘It was built in 1960 at a cost of Rs. 5 million for an individual house from the state treasury. About 35-40 years later, it was sold for Rs 20 million. During the construction of this compound, 15,000 workers were exploited,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dhakal claimed that even the army was used to build private houses during the construction.<\/p>\n
He said that the issue of workers being made to work without paying proper wages at that time is also a part of history. <\/p>\n
He said that he has interpreted the word ‘Singh’ associated with the name of Singha Durbar as a symbol of the then ruling trend.<\/p>\n
“A lion is bigger than a tiger,” he said. This is the name of the Queen. Does the word “lion” reflect compassion and kindness? It shows pride. It reflects the ruler. “<\/p>\n
Dhakal again clarified that he did not want to change the name of Singha Durbar. Instead, he said that he had raised questions about the remnants of the Rana era associated with Singha Durbar and the sense of power reflected from them. <\/p>\n
“I wish I had changed my name,” he said. I haven’t said I’m going to change my name. My only thing is that it is clear after watching the whole video. “<\/p>\n
He also raised the issues of access to Singha Durbar and equal access of citizens to state resources. He said that he has presented the problems faced by the marginalized Chepang community as an example of lack of access to Singha Durbar. <\/p>\n
Dhakal claimed that the state has not paid attention to addressing the problems of the Chepang community including living standard and malnutrition even though it has been a long time since the track of the Chepang highway from Bhandara to Malekhu was opened. He said, “The track of the Chepang highway from Bhandara to Malekhu was opened 24 years ago due to lack of access to Singha Durbar.<\/p>\n
The standard of living of the Chepang community and the malnutrition there, and the situation of not having access to Singha Durbar. <\/p>\n
He said that a debate has started in the academic and intellectual circles regarding his statement. He complained that his opinion was based on some parts without watching the entire video.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hari Dhakal, defending his statement about Singha Durbar, said, “History will not be erased .”KATHMANDU: Joint General Secretary of Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) and lawmaker Hari Dhakal has defended his remark on Singha Durbar. Talking to media persons at the Parliament House premises on Monday, Dhakal said that the history will not be erased byContinue reading “History will not be erased: Hari Dhakal defends Singha Durbar remark”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":86532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-samachar-en"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/photo-1_15fa2ee9.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86544,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86543\/revisions\/86544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/media\/86532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}