Indeed, with the start of monsoon showers in July, Nepal has seen the release of senior democratic activists detained since February. As trade-off, presumably, India’s first allotment of military aid to the king’s regime, suspended in February, also reached Nepal. The UK and US will likely follow India’s lead, releasing “non-lethal” aid to Nepal’s military, despite the democratic forces’ ardent pleas not to.

But the international community and Nepalis observe different seasons. The former will mistake a seasonal lull in political activism for acquiescence. And it will ignore the fact that there has been open evidence that the military has been violating human rights, and extending its hold over what should be civilian branches of government: the administration, the ministries, the judiciary. (There has been no parliament or other elected branch of government since 2002.)

Almost every day in Nepal now, the king’s cabinet passes some new ordinance (which carries the force of law for six months). These ordinances are invariably aimed at controlling or co-opting what used to be autonomous commissions, non-government organisations, the media and civil society groups. To use an American turn of phrase, democratic institutions are being demolished “on a war footing”. By the end of the monsoon and the autumn festivals, the king’s control over all aspects of public life in Nepal will be total.

Are Nepalis doomed, then, to wait until late October before the democracy movement can gain vibrancy?

I have heard a “yes” vote here in New Delhi, at a recent meeting of Nepalis living across the border to evade government harassment back home.

Rajendra Mahato is a former parliamentarian and the general-secretary of the Nepal Sadbhawana Party, one of the eight political groups that have jointly called for the restoration of democracy in Nepal. He explained to a largely unaffiliated audience that the political parties fully intend to press for the restoration of democracy. “Of course, during the monsoon”, he added, “it is hard to make people come out onto the streets. We will keep up the pressure now. But the movement will intensify only after the rains.”

His colleague Hridesh Tripathi said much the same in passing when I met him by chance a few days later: “The movement looks slack because it’s the season for farm work. But it will gain momentum when the rains end.”

Yet the seasons alone may not explain the present lull in the democracy movement.

The movement (the present one is the third so far in Nepal’s history – the first one developed in the 1940s and the second in the 1980s) began two months after King Gyanendra sacked the last elected prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, in October 2002. Citing Article 127 of the Nepali constitution, the king appointed a cabinet of his own handpicked loyalists. (The article does not, in fact, allow the king any such authority. But legalities did not get in his way).

Numerous individual lawyers, journalists and intellectuals immediately deemed the king’s takeover unconstitutional as a matter of principle. It took the parties three months to do so. Even then, it was only the parties’ student unions who came onto the streets. The students began to demand that Nepal become a republic state, echoing a demand that only the Maoist insurgents had made so far. The parties themselves joined the movement only in February 2003. Their leaders promptly silenced the call for republicanism.

In March 2003, there was a ceasefire between the king’s regime and the Maoists. The parties announced then that their movement was going to be “decisive”. Yet their protest – variously called a “stir” or an “agitation” – did not inspire ordinary Nepalis to join in. When the ceasefire broke down in August 2003 (after the military massacred nineteen unarmed Maoists detainees, sabotaging peace talks) there was a real possibility for the democratic movement to become “decisive” at last.

But at this point the Indian, British and American ambassadors to Nepal visited party leaders in their homes and offices, and lobbied them not to be too confrontational with the king, lest they unwittingly strengthen the Maoist insurgents’ hand. When the parties acquiesced, and ceased their stirs and agitations, their leadership became irrevocably tainted with an air of compromise. The parties were not adhering to the principle of democracy. This compromise was further reinforced in May 2004, when the Nepali Congress Party (Democratic), the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist) and other parties agreed to sit in a cabinet formed by the king under Article 127. Their stirs and agitations were discredited as mere power-grabs.

The Nepali Congress Party alone refused to endorse this ‘reconciliation’ with the king. Thus, when King Gyanendra formalised his coup last February, arresting thousands of party activists across the country, only the Nepali Congress Party appeared steadfast in its principles. It has since taken leadership of the democracy movement.