Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli claims to be a communist. Until May 2018, his party’s name was CPN-UML (Communist Party of Nepal–Unified Marxist Leninist), which preached dialectical materialism. Like any other leader who claimed to be a communist, Oli too believed in Marx’s celebrated dictum: religion is the opium of the people.

The 69-year-old prime minister today seems to have shed all his communist characteristics. There was a time when he was hauled to jail where he spent 14 years for opposing the Panchayat regime under the now-abolished monarchy in the 1970s and 1980s. He, however, faces charges of acting like a monarch these days, 12 years after the country deposed Gyanendra, consigning him to history as the last monarch of the Shah dynasty that ruled Nepal for over 240 years.

And on Monday, Oli went to the Pashupatinath temple. He spent a little over an hour and performed a special puja. He then instructed officials of the Pashupati Area Development Trust to develop the revered Hindu pilgrimage site as a holy place for “adherents of Vedic Sanatan Dharma”.

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