Nepal, Jan. 11 -- Every Prithvi Jayanti, Nepal does not merely commemorate the birth of King Prithvi Narayan Shah; it reenacts an argument about how nations ought to remember their modern-day founders, which is increasingly (and quite predictably) polarised. On one side are those who insist that Shah must be revered without qualification-as the reunifier of the nation, the architect of modern statehood, and thus a figure whose legacy must remain untouched by criticism (which is often characterised as foreign-funded). On the other side are those who approach him almost exclusively through the language of violence, conquest and cruelty, reducing a complex historical figure to a moral indictment. Between these two camps of sycophancy and ico...