Sri Teen Chandra Shumsher Junga Bahadur Rana |
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Native name | श्री ३ चन्द्र शमशेर जंग बहादुर राणा |
Born | 8 July 1863 |
Died | 26 November 1929 | (aged 66)
Occupation | Prime Minister of Nepal |
Title | Sri 3 Maharaj of Kaski and Lamjung |
Predecessor | Dev Samshar |
Successor | Bhim Shamsher |
Field-Marshal Maharaja Sri Teen Chandra Shumsher Junga Bahadur Rana, GCB, GCSI, GCVO, GCMG, FRGS (8 July 1863 – 26 November 1929) was the fifth Prime Minister of Nepal from the Rana dynasty. He served in this capacity from 27 June 1901 to his death in 1929, after he successfully disposed his liberal and reformist brother Dev Shamsher. Although generally perceived as despotic and conservative, he is credited with several reforms including the abolition of slavery.
Chandra Shumsher was the sixth of the seventeen sons of Dhir Shumsher Rana (the youngest brother of Jung Bahadur Rana) through his Thapa wife Nanda Kumari, of whom he was the third son. He was educated in Kolkata and thus became to be the first Nepalese Prime Minister who had passed matriculation examination. In the convocation address of 1884, the then Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University praised him as: "a gentleman who has shown he can handle pen as efficiently as sword." Seto Bagh, a historical novel set on the early days of Chandra Shumsher, depicts him as an ambitious and cunning young man with an excellent command upon English language.
He along with his brothers Khadga Shumsher and Bir Shamsher, orchestrated the murder of his uncle Sri Teen Maharaja Ranodip Singh in order to rise in the line of succession for the hereditary Rana Prime Minister of Nepal. After the demise of his eldest brother Bir Shamsher in March 1901, he became the Commander in Chief of the Nepalese Army under the premiership of his brother Dev Shamsher. Deva Shamsher, however, was a liberal and fearing the rise in public awareness and eventual democratisation that his short rule had brought, Chandra Shamsher orchestrated coup d'état and seized the power for himself in June 1908. Although opposed to reforms and public education, he would later bring numerous reforms, most of them unwillingly, after his visit to Europe, as he found Nepal to be far more backwards than Europe.