Flags of Nepal

Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal

Who & why: the newly elected Constituent Assembly meets on 28 May 2008 and votes to abolish the 240-year-old Shah monarchy, proclaiming the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. The move follows the 2006 peace accord that ended a decade-long Maoist insurgency and a mass pro-democracy movement earlier that same year; a 2015 constitution formalizes Nepal's present structure of seven federal provinces.

What it represents: the flag itself does not change at the republic's founding — only the state beneath it does. The crimson double pennant, blue border, and white sun and moon continue unaltered from their 1962 geometric standardization.

Restored constitutional monarchy

Who & why: the 1990 People's Movement forces King Birendra to lift the ban on political parties and accept a new constitution restoring multiparty democracy under the crown. A Maoist insurgency against the monarchy and government breaks out in 1996 and runs for a decade, killing an estimated 17,000 people before a November 2006 peace accord brings the rebels into mainstream politics. The June 2001 royal massacre, in which Crown Prince Dipendra killed King Birendra and much of the royal family before dying himself, passes the throne to the unpopular King Gyanendra, whose own 2005 seizure of direct power collapses within a year under renewed mass protest.

What it represents: Wikipedia says Article 5, Schedule 1 of the constitution of 9 November 1990 gave a geometric description of the flag, and that in 2008 several parties asked to change the design (arguing it symbolised Hinduism and monarchy) and the proposal was rejected. Wikipedia does not say the design changed in 1990. FOTW does not cover 1990 or 2008.

Panchayat system

Who & why: unhappy with the elected government, King Mahendra stages a royal coup in December 1960, dissolves parliament, bans political parties, and imprisons the elected prime minister. In their place he installs the Panchayat system: a tiered structure of indirectly elected councils that keeps real authority with the palace behind a facade of local representation. It lasts three decades, through Mahendra's reign and into his son Birendra's, until mass protest forces its end in 1990.

What it represents: Wikipedia says the current flag was adopted on 16 December 1962 with a new constitutional government, standardised by Shankar Nath Rimal at King Mahendra's request, and that until then the sun and moon had human faces, removed to modernise the flag. FOTW gives 12 December 1962 for adoption and 16 December for the stylised sun and moon, and one contributor believes the faces were removed then. The sources read do not say the faces dated from the 19th century in general.

Restored monarchy, early multiparty democracy

Who & why: the 1950–51 revolution, backed by India and the Nepali Congress, ends more than a century of Rana rule and restores King Tribhuvan to actual power. Nepal holds its first democratic general election in 1959, bringing B. P. Koirala and the Nepali Congress to office — a brief opening that King Mahendra closes with his own coup at the end of 1960.

What it represents: The crimson double pennant with human faces in the sun and moon, which Wikipedia says the flag carried until 1962. Wikipedia says some historians credit the Rana ruler Jung Bahadur with changing the sun and moon into faces; FOTW shows flags with faces in 1939 and 1958 reproductions and a 1928 book showing a crimson flag with a green border. The sources read do not describe informal proportions or a Shah-era origin for the faces.

Rana oligarchy

Who & why: the September 1846 Kot Massacre, in which Jung Bahadur Kunwar (later Rana) orchestrates the killing of dozens of rival courtiers and nobles in the royal palace courtyard, leaves him in control of the army and government. He takes the hereditary title of prime minister for his family, later renamed Rana, reducing the Shah kings to titular monarchs while real power passes down a hereditary line of Rana prime ministers for the next 104 years.

What it represents: the double pennant continues as Nepal's flag under Rana rule, but the sources do not say it stayed unchanged: Wikipedia says some historians credit the Rana ruler Jung Bahadur with changing the sun and moon into faces, and Flags of the World's page on a 1928 book shows the national flag then with white faces on the crescent and sun. Wikipedia gives no dates for the Rana period and does not mention the Kot Massacre; FOTW says Rana family members served as prime ministers until 1961 and describes the flag as based on two pennants of rival Rana branches.

Kingdom of Nepal (Shah dynasty, unification)

Who & why: Prithvi Narayan Shah, king of the small hill principality of Gorkha, begins a military campaign of conquest in the 1740s–50s and captures the Kathmandu Valley in 1768–69, ending Malla rule there and founding the Shah dynasty's Kingdom of Nepal on the unified territory. Continued Gorkhali expansion northward and westward eventually provokes the British East India Company, and the 1814–16 Anglo-Nepalese War ends with the March 1816 Sugauli Treaty: Nepal cedes border territory (including much of the modern Nepal-India borderlands) but is never annexed or made a colony, remaining a sovereign, British-influenced buffer state.

What it represents: Wikipedia says the Gorkha kingdom's flag began as a single red triangular Shah war banner, that many accounts date the double pennant to King Prithvi Narayan Shah, and that it became the standard flag after unification; it gives no dates. Wikipedia says some historians credit the Rana ruler Jung Bahadur with changing the sun and moon into faces, so the human-faced sun and moon shown here are not supported for this period by the sources read. The proportions shown are a reconstruction.

Fragmented hill kingdoms and Kathmandu Valley principalities

Who & why: from around 1200, the Kathmandu Valley is ruled by the Malla dynasty, which by 1482 splits into three rival city-kingdoms — Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur — each with its own court. Outside the valley, dozens of small principalities scattered across the middle hills, including the small kingdom of Gorkha, govern independently with no shared crown. This patchwork ends only when Gorkha's Prithvi Narayan Shah conquers the valley in 1768–69 and begins unifying the surrounding hill states under one throne.

What it represents: no single flag can be attributed with confidence to this fragmented era — the Malla courts used royal seals, coats of arms, and temple banners rather than fixed territorial flags, and no one design can stand in for dozens of separate principalities. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.

Licchavi Dynasty (Kathmandu Valley)

Who & why: the Licchavi dynasty is the earliest polity ruling the Kathmandu Valley for which a hard documentary record survives: dozens of dated Sanskrit stone inscriptions, beginning with King Manadeva I's own inscription of 464 CE, fix a firm chronology centuries before any surviving Nepalese flag or comparable emblem. Licchavi kings, likely originating from northern India, preside over a golden era under Amshuverma in the early 7th century and later Narendradeva, whose restoration to the throne comes with Tibetan and Chinese backing; a marriage alliance with Tibet's Songtsen Gampo (by tradition) and a Nepali contingent that joined a 648 CE Tang Chinese campaign into northern India mark the dynasty's documented reach beyond the valley itself. The Licchavi line fades from the record after about 750 CE into a poorly documented transitional ("Thakuri") period that precedes the rise of the Malla dynasty around 1200.

What it represents: no flag or comparable territorial banner survives from the Licchavi era, centuries before flags in any modern heraldic sense existed anywhere in South Asia; royal authority is instead recorded through stone inscriptions, coinage, and seals. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.

World context: this dynasty's documented span runs alongside the golden age of India's Gupta Empire immediately to the south, the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 CE) and Byzantium's construction of the Hagia Sophia (completed 537 CE), the rise of Islam and the rapid Arab conquests from the 630s, and the height of Tang dynasty China, whose 648 CE embassy into India drew directly on Licchavi Nepal's own troops.