Submit your Article

Haritalika (Teej) is a cherished festival, particularly among Hindu women, celebrated with great fervor. According to Hindu scriptures, Goddess Parvati undertook a rigorous fast to win Lord Mahadev as her husband. Today, women continue to observe this fast, whether for their husbands’ well-being, spiritual devotion, or personal desires. Teej symbolizes the strength of intimate relationships, providing a platform for sharing joys and sorrows for women. Nowadays, Hindu women, both in the country and abroad, celebrate Teej as an important festival.

Opinions about Teej, however, vary among women. Some emphasize its connection to their husbands’ longevity, while others view it as a sacred tradition or a means to foster unity among women. There are a few exceptions who consider Teej is exclusively for married women. But festivals should never be bound by limitations; they must be inclusive and welcoming to all. It is crucial to avoid prescribing rigid rules for beliefs like these. How can we justify imposing specific requirements? Our upbringing in diverse religious, cultural, and familial backgrounds shapes our unique perspectives. Using our viewpoints for our convenience is nothing but a display of our ego.

In this context, I share an instance of broad-mindedness exhibited by my mother-in-law. Twenty-three years ago, it had only been two years since my husband passed, my son was playing outside on the day of Teej. He saw women dressed in vibrant attire and insisted that I do the same. His innocent request evoked both pain and fear within me. My mother-in-law, who was observing all this, explained that Teej is a festival celebrating love, belonging, trust, and relationships, not just with husbands but with all our loved ones. She emphasized that it did not mean I should abstain from observing the festival. I saw a septuagenarian challenging societal norms. Her words filled me with pride as her daughter-in-law. With her encouragement, I not only embraced the occasion but also strengthened our bond, all while witnessing the joy on my son's face. Sadly, such open-mindedness is often rare even among younger generations.

For social change, we must extend our empathetic thinking to all sections of society. By doing so, we can offer not just sympathy but also promote equality through small gestures. I recall another incident that took place 22 years ago. On the eve of Teej, Dr Shiva Paudel offered me a gift. It surprised many since it was unusual for men to offer gifts to women on Teej. Seeing glass bangles and bindis of vibrant colors in the gift box, all of us were shocked and surprised. But he emphasized that women had every right to adorn themselves as they pleased and encouraged us to make the change ourselves. His words displayed immense respect for women. While there were other educated women advocating for women's rights, their perspectives differed. From that day on, I proudly wore colorful bangles and bindis and initiated a ‘red campaign’ to encourage other single women to do the same.

We often talk about women's rights but struggle to broaden our perspectives. In many Teej programs, with some exceptions, even the educated elite struggle to welcome others with open hearts. What's even more disheartening is that these elites readily participate in other social justice initiatives, highlighting the discrimination. When will society overcome these divisions? How can we facilitate change? Perhaps by adopting the ‘red campaign,’ single women can assert their right to live with dignity, just like any other member of society. Yet, societal divisions still inflict occasional wounds. Perhaps you can experience change when you change your perspective to foster equality. It’s time to reframe your mindset.

One of the factors behind the 2008 financial crisis was the liberalization of mortgage lending. Banks would give out mortgages to people who should not have qualified for a mortgage out of greed. They wanted more and more people locked into repaying them loans for the rest of their lives! But the banks’ greed came back to bite them in 2008 when so many people couldn’t pay back their mortgages that many banks and insurance firms went bankrupt, causing a global financial crisis.

Nepal was striding toward good governance with the reinstatement of democracy in 1990. But the Maoist insurgency that began at that time took a toll on that stride. These days, greed, a strong desire for more wealth and power and its evil twin envy—the desire for what other people have in the society—seems to be gripping the Nepali society, especially those at the upper echelons. 

A slide into survival culture

Nepal’s ‘rich culture’ is converting into a ‘survival culture’. 

Rich culture is the source of national pride that contributes to the diversity and identity of a community and plays a significant role in shaping its values, social norms, and history, fostering intercultural understanding, and enhancing global diversity. It encompasses various traditions, customs, arts, and practices aspects like language, art, music, dance, literature, cuisine, clothing, and religious beliefs that have been developed and passed down through generations within a society and often celebrated through festivals, rituals, and other cultural events.

Whereas survival culture refers to the knowledge, skills and practices necessary for individuals or communities to endure challenging or threatening situations. It is often associated with indigenous or marginalized groups, who have adapted to harsh cultural and less opportunistic upbringings. Survival culture includes maintaining the communities’ own cultures, practices and skills like religious beliefs and traditional practices. It ensures the survival and sustainability of communities in an ongoing unfavorable condition and helps preserve their unique identities and ways of life.

The social foundation of Nepal is ever changing. The country’s ‘rich culture’ is ‘exhausting’ and steering into a ‘survival culture’. The change in behavior patterns to self-centeredness at the cost of losing Nepal’s identity is in the making. 

Rebecca Henschke, BBC’s Asia editor and Korean journalist Kevin Kim in the ‘Heart and Soul’ episode, said Nepal has one of the fastest growing Christian communities in the world with South Korean missionaries like Pang Chang-in and his wife Lee Jeong-hee helping to drive the growth. This is a rare insight into an organized and increasingly controversial Korean mission, spreading the Christian faith with new churches and cultivating the next generation of Nepali Christian leaders in the Himalayas. It is a risky undertaking as those found guilty of converting people face up to five years in jail in Nepal. 

Moreover, Nepal’s culture and traditional practices are giving in. Nepal’s strategic positioning with faith as a factor for political influence cannot be overlooked. The majority Hindu inhabitants, fast growing Christians community and rising Muslim residents are all carving their spaces in the region as never before. This is a very complex problem with no easy solutions. It will add to the fragile national security environment with complexities unless the nation focuses on answers when liberties of the minorities are raised in a decade to come. 

Conclusion

This is also a behavioral approach to national security with direct implications for regional security. National character is led by fear, greed, incompetence, ineffectiveness, inefficiencies and shortsightedness. Secure national character contributes to national security when insecure national character furthers to national insecurity. Simple questions that arise or can be asked about behavior science for national security and nation building are: Was federalism endorsed as a national requirement or a greed-led distribution of power? Was secularism meant to preserve and enhance the cultures, traditions and religious practices and national desire or was it an influenced endorsement for other’s aspirations? 

Other cases in point are the debates in the society and the Parliament of how Nepal is insecure with the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Nepal Compact between the American aid agency MCC and the government of Nepal that is designed to increase the availability of electricity at lower costs as well as the State Partnership Program (SPP) to assist the Nepali Army on fulfilling its responsibilities with humanitarian assistance, improving capabilities contrary to the disinformation that it was part of the Indo-Pacific strategy and a geopolitical tool to contain China. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is another concept that is contested when strategic infrastructure development is a need and assistance with grants is a viable approach.   

The point is national characteristics such as greed and fear in policy-making should be taken as risk and how behavioral approaches to growth alienate and antagonize nation-building. Negative behavioral approach to nation building is bad. So “national character building” must be addressed. Winston Churchill said “Fear is reaction. Courage is a decision”.

There is a tendency to criticize, finger-point and deflect the citizenry with self inventions about the roguish foreign interference, when in reality it is the fallout of fear, greed, incompetence, ineffectiveness, inefficiencies and shortsightedness, which are complex problems with no easy solutions. 

The utmost menace big or small is a perception rather than realism with an insecure frame of mind, with confidence to make up rationality and strategic wisdom to recompense for own contentment, incompetence and absence of self-knowledge. Indeed, more often than not, the biggest threat is one’s own fears and own greed. Threat has also increased almost in parallel with the decline of self-confidence.

Preserving and safeguarding the cultural richness of Nepal requires various measures and efforts. They include, documentation and research, education and awareness, legal protection, community involvement, sustainable reasonable tourism that respect cultural values and finally invest in training programs, workshops, and capacity-building initiatives and community engagement with internationally supported programs.

Greed-led national policies can have profound consequences, impacting various aspects of society, from the economy, social order to governance. It is critical to recognize the risks and potential drawbacks related to giving precedence to individual gains over collective welfare. By promoting ethical governance, striking a balance between self-interest and public welfare, and fostering inclusive policy-making processes, nations can mitigate the negative consequences and inconsistent behavior. 

The author is a Strategic Analyst, Major General (Retd) of the Nepali Army, and is associated with Rangsit University, Thailand

Do we perceive the real or what we desire to see? Two observers of the same event often recall differing details. Patanjali prescribed yoga to discipline the mind and dampen its wanderings, chittavritti nirodha; otherwise perception gets clouded by rationale, opposites, alternatives, sleep and memory. A well aware person’s brain emits clean theta waves that maintain long range temporal correlation, but the beta waves of people with confused identity lose such correlation due to interference with neural noise (Sci Rep 11, article number 422 (2021)). Sensors, used by scientists to extend their own, are cooled to reduce inherent noise. Touch, taste, smell, sound and sight are identified as the five physical senses, but the Gita teaches that the mind is the sixth sensor, indriyanam manashchasmi. So the conscious living mind cannot be completely stilled. This issue was thrust upon physicists as they explored the nanoworld of atomic interactions. Planck discerned light as a stream of discrete energy photons in 1900 to usher in the quantum era. Integers in the Balmer formula, for the wavelengths of light emitted by hydrogen atoms, arrived 15 years too early to be realized as quantic. Another 13 years passed before Bohr related it to quantized electronic momentum, which in turn was seen as a standing electron wave by de Broglie a decade later. The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Alain Aspect (France), Anton Zeilinger (Austria) and John Clauser (USA) for experiments supporting quantum randomness over local reality. 

Wave-particle (or spirit-matter) duality of nature is not dialectical but complementary. Delayed choice experiments prove that the two apparitions cannot be seen simultaneously; a quantum immediately erases its wavy history for a particle detector, and vice-versa. Similar waves superpose to make bigger or smaller ones. This led Schrodinger to think of his cat in a live+dead superposed state until let out of the bag. Infinitely superposed general waves collapse randomly into one of the constituent eigenstates at detection. Einstein bemoaned how anyone can believe “that the Moon is not there when you are not looking at it.” Heisenberg’s limit on determinism required the product of uncertainties in conjugate variables like position and momentum to be greater than the Planck constant. A particle is located at best within the wavelength of light that bounces off it; more precision with shorter wavelength transfers higher momentum which becomes more uncertain. Wigner paradox, on seeing a quantum system differently than his friend, is under test. 

Einstein used quantum to explain many effects and got the Nobel Prize for photoelectricity. Skeptical of the randomness, he later declared “God does not play dice with the Universe,” and Bohr retorted, “Stop telling God what to do.” Einstein, with Podolsky and Rosen, proposed the EPR paradox in 1935 to precipitate the issue. A subatomic particle like neutral pion at rest can decay into a photon pair, or any other allowed particle-antiparticle, that fly off in opposite directions with opposite spins and other quantum numbers. Measuring the properties of one immediately tells of the distant partner. Such faster than light “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein called, violates causality that requires cause to precede effect. They thought it suggestive of hidden variables that would preserve local reality. Schrodinger conjoined the decay pair into an entangled state of highly correlated components. Bell proved a theorem requiring the correlation coefficient of measurements in a locally real hidden variable theory to be less than a certain value, while quantum randomness would make it greater.

Clauser modified Bell inequality in 1972 to make it measurable, entangled photons about six meters apart, measured a greater value to reject local realism, and lost his two dollar bet against quantum randomness. In the next decade, Aspect closed the unidirectional loophole of Clauser’s observation, with random directional views of entangled photons traversing through 12 meters. Can a hidden variable impose sequence on what appears random? Then Zeilinger, who had entangled photons about half a kilometer apart, devised a method in 2017 to use light emitted by stars hundreds of light years away to generate randomness. One could still argue that the randomness was wiped out by an encoding in the starlight, about an experiment to be performed by an unborn scientist. Every loophole cannot be closed but becomes ever more fantastic, setting quantum theory on a stronger base. A scientific theory has to remain continually verified by experiments to ever increasing precision till the present; a single contradiction turns it into fiction. 

Entanglement is used in teleportation to produce an exactly similar state elsewhere; but two identical states cannot co-exist, so the original has to be disentangled immediately; hence they can be used for unbreakable encryption in quantum networks. They are also the qubit of  quantum computers. Binary digits (bits) are stored in our classical computer as either of two states represented by 0 and 1. A qubit can store any of the infinitely different superpositions of its two states, all fractions from 0 to 1, making quantum computers many fold quicker. In a recent interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais (14 June 2023), Zeilinger says that a full quantum computer would require thousand qubits, and the present ones have just about 50. He thinks that quantum computers will enter cell phones in a hundred years. The Austrian Academy of Sciences entangled photons almost 250 km apart in an optical fiber, Max Planck Institute entangled a cluster of 14 photons, and the MIT atomic clock has been stabilized with entangled photons to lose less than one second in 150bn years. The whole Universe could be a single quantum state, entangled in a neural network (doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2020.525731) of the cosmic web that ensnares every mass to comprise the mind of nature. 

As any observation physically affects the observed, absolute reality is unknowable. A surrounding that adjusts to our sense of awareness tells that nature is intrinsically conscious. This possibility will be discussed in subsequent articles. 

The author is a professor of Physics

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal is set to visit China later this month. It is reported that PM Dahal would emphasize an agreement on cross-border energy trade, construction of two cross-border transmission lines in Rasuwagadhi and Kimathanka border points, construction of trans-Himalayan roads and integrated check posts among others. If the visit brings back home a few major breakthroughs in arenas of energy trade and connectivity, PM Dahal’s visit could be considered successful.

There are, however, quite a few challenges in further deepening Nepal-China ties as new proclivities and patterns of China’s engagement with Nepal—mostly problematic—have emerged over the last decade. One small event in Bhaktapur district in July this year sheds light on China’s newfound engagement patterns.

In the event, two representatives of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s International Liaison Department launched a project named “Silk Roadster” to mark the 10th anniversary of President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The event was meaningful in three aspects—i) Silk Roadster is the latest one among quite a few initiatives announced over the decades and is reflective of China’s penchant for engaging with Nepal through new initiatives which are more often than not vaguely envisioned and fail to gain the necessary traction, ii) China’s proclivity to portray the success story of Nepal-China BRI agreement which in essence has remained in limbo for long and iii) China’s tendency to undertake bilateral relationship undermining standard diplomatic norms—mostly by prioritizing CCP’s party-to-party ties with the communist parties of Nepal.

Too many initiatives

Nepal had signed up for President Xi’s signature initiative BRI in May 2017. Both parties kept the MoU undisclosed for five years—and only when a Nepali media house released the full-text document in 2022, its contentious and vaguely defined provisions, such as the Free Trade Agreement and Policy Exchanges, drew scrutiny. In 2018, Nepal submitted a list of 35 projects to be executed under the initiative but upon China’s insistence the number was reduced to 16 and then to nine, finally. In Dec 2022, a Chinese expert team visited Nepal to initiate the Detailed Project Report of the Kathmandu-Kerung Railway—one among the nine proposed projects. Apart from this, there has been no concrete development—neither any provision is implemented nor any project under construction. Rather, Indian companies have bagged two of the proposed projects—Phukot Karnali Hydropower Project and Tamor Hydropower Project.

The main problem with Nepal-China BRI agreement remains the funding modality. While Nepal was already cognizant of the fact that BRI entailed loan components with a comparatively higher interest rate even while signing up for the initiative, no agreement was reached then. The Nepali Congress government formed in 2021 made it clear to China that Nepal simply cannot undertake BRI projects on commercial loans. That aside, starting from 2018, China’s lending spree also has taken a downturn due to its own economic slowdown. And the failure of some BRI projects across the globe have served as cautionary tales for countries like Nepal that are yet to enter the implementation phase of the BRI.

China has, however, gone to lengths in portraying the success story of the BRI in Nepal. In Dec 2022, just a day before the inauguration of the Pokhara International Airport (PIA), the Chinese Embassy in Nepal claimed PIA to be the flagship project under the initiative. The PIA was constructed with a loan from the Export-Import Bank of China, but it isn’t one among those nine proposed projects. And in July, the Silk Roadster platform was announced under the BRI framework focusing mainly on people-to-people exchanges in arenas like imparting training, building skills and providing scholarships.

Apart from the BRI, China has launched a few other initiatives. In 2022, China announced the Global Development Initiative (GDI) under which two projects are to be implemented in Nepal. The next is the Global Security Initiative (GSI). While China has been lobbying and pressuring political leaders, particularly the communists, to push Nepal into signing up for it, Nepal hasn’t done so as our foreign policy proscribes joining security or strategic alliances. However, former President Bidya Devi Bhandari had participated in the GSI event in 2022, despite repeated requests from the government to not do so. In 2023, China announced yet another initiative called the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), which is quite ambiguous in its conception and language. Nepal hasn’t joined GCI either but, in June 2023, a dragon boat race was carried out in Pokhara under this initiative.

China has sought to engage with Nepal via its many initiatives announced in the last few years but none have materialized yet. If anything, these initiatives—particularly the GSI and GCI—have created confusion and shifted focus from main priorities and issues of Nepal-China collaboration.

Party-to-party ties

The next pattern that has emerged over the years is China prioritizing party-to-party ties, particularly ties with the communist ones, which amounts to undermining standard diplomatic norms and procedures. Albeit nominal, the common ideological identity makes it easier for the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) to engage with the communist parties.

China had facilitated the communist collaboration and subsequent party merger in 2017, and so long as the Nepal Communist Party (now divided into CPN-UML and CPN Maoist Center) was in power, China’s influence over Nepal was quite high. In 2019, about 50 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders provided training to more than 200 Nepal Communist Party leaders on “Xi Jinping Thought”—a blueprint for consolidating authoritarian power.  It was during NCP’s rule, in 2020, that Nepal voted for Beijing’s new security law for Hong Kong, introduced amidst the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The law had provisions of harsh penalties for vaguely defined political crimes. 

In 2020 itself, Nepal had defended Chinese policies in the western region of Xinjiang, at the UN General Assembly, despite reports that the state was subjecting the Uyghur Muslims community to systemic atrocities. During President Xi’s visit to Nepal in 2019, both sides had reportedly agreed to elevate the relationship to the “strategic level”—with neither side coming up with further clarification or justification regarding the use of the term “strategic”. 

China had perceived the split of NCP in 2021, and the subsequent parliamentary ratification of the US’ MCC as its influence over Nepal slipping away. China was then upbeat during the short-lived collaboration between the two main communist parties in forming a new government in 2022. These are just some cases in point—the pattern is all too clear.

China is a one-party state and the CPC itself is involved in China’s bilateral engagements. However, employing CPC’s party ties with the ideological counterparts in Nepal to push China’s interest is a challenge for a fledgling democracy like Nepal, which is yet to institutionalize democratic institutions, norms and procedures. China emphasizing ties with communist parties at the expense of other parties doesn’t even portend well for Sino-Nepal relationship as the communist and democratic forces command almost equal support of Nepal’s voting populace.

Conclusion

While Nepal can benefit a lot from collaboration with China, China’s push for multiple initiatives, and China’s emphasis for party-to-party ties along with a newfound penchant to interfere in Nepal’s internal affairs have come across as major challenges. China should now prioritize infrastructure projects, development assistance, and energy trade rather than seeking to push Nepal toward signing up for its many initiatives. 

It is also high time China acknowledged that it enjoys relatively favorable opinion amongst Nepal’s general public for a simple reason that, in the past, it had mostly refrained from directly interfering in our domestic affairs. On Nepal’s part, political parties should give up the tendency of employing bilateral relationships to their own advantage, and the government should negotiate toughly to safeguard our interests. PM Dahal’s upcoming visit is an opportune moment to do just that. The ball, however, is in China’s court—the trajectory of Nepal-China relationship is largely contingent on China’s approach, and its flexibility to address and accommodate our concerns.

The author is a research fellow at the Center for Social Inclusion and Federalism