Legacy of Courage: Late Dharma Ratna Yami and the Dream of a Secular Nepal
When Nepal was still a kingdom draped in ritual authority and Brahminical control, Late Dharma Ratna stood apart. He spoke of secularism — not as a foreign idea, but as a moral necessity for equality. In an era when religion and state were inseparable, his vision was nothing short of revolutionary. Dharma Ratna understood that true faith requires freedom, and that a society bound by caste and clerical privilege could never be just. His advocacy challenged the priestly monopoly over public life — the idea that one community’s rituals defined the nation’s identity. He faced fierce opposition. Brahmin elites denounced him, institutions resisted him, and yet he persisted — believing that secularism was not the rejection of faith, but the liberation of conscience.
Today, decades later, Nepal stands as a secular republic — at least on paper. Yet, the cultural power structures he resisted continue to shape the country. The same hierarchies that silenced reformers in his time still whisper from within our politics, our textbooks, our festivals.
To honor Dharma Ratna’s legacy is to recognize that secularism is not a finished project. It is an ongoing struggle — to free the mind as much as the state, to let every citizen believe, or not believe, without fear or hierarchy. “Secularism was never a betrayal of tradition,” he might remind us.
“It was the promise of equality our traditions never fulfilled.”
Why Rewriting History Matters
Rewriting history is not about erasing the past — it’s about reclaiming who gets to narrate it. It means writing Nepal’s story from the bottom up — through the experiences of those who tilled the land, built the temples, wove the cloth, fought the wars, traveele outside the country in search of food and money who were barred from employment opportunies in side Nepal and sustained the festivals and families, but never saw their names in the chronicles. It means recognizing the plural histories of the Himalaya — not a single “Hindu” past, but a tapestry of Buddhist, animist, Kirat, and syncretic traditions that shaped the real Nepal. It means challenging the idea that civilization arrived with Sanskrit and the court — when in truth, it thrived long before and beyond them.
A New Historical Imagination
To rewrite history is to reimagine identity.
It is to say that the farmer is as historical as the king. The midwife’s rituals are as sacred as the priest’s mantras. The drumbeat of the Magar and the chants of the Tamang are archives of a nation as real as any royal inscription. Nepal’s future depends on this rebalancing — on transforming history from a Brahminical genealogy into a collective memory.
History was written by Brahmins. They chronicled kings and gods, not people and pain. They called conquest “unification,” hierarchy “order,” and exclusion “dharma.” It is time to rewrite — to let farmers, weavers, shamans, and midwives enter the record. To hear the history whispered in mother tongues, not just recited in Sanskrit. Nepal’s story is not one of divine descent — it is the story of countless hands that built, resisted, and dreamed. History of Nepal should be rewritten — not to destroy the past, but to finally tell it truthfully.
The Silent Endurance of Brahminical Power in Democratic Nepal
The monarchy may have fallen, but its priests have found new patrons — the state itself.”
When Nepal declared itself a secular, federal democratic republic in 2007, it was heralded as the end of divine kingship and the beginning of modern democracy. The king — once worshipped as Lord Vishnu’s earthly incarnation — was gone. The temples would stand apart from the state. Yet nearly two decades later, the sacred and the political remain intertwined. Temples still dominate skylines and calendars; priests still mediate the moments of life and death; and the hierarchies that once sustained monarchy now pulse quietly through modern institutions. Secularism, it seems, has been written into the law — but not yet into the soul of the nation.
I. THE HISTORICAL ALLIANCE: THRONE AND TEMPLE
For over two centuries, the monarchy and Brahminical religion were two sides of the same coin.
Prithvi Narayan Shah’s Divya Upadesh famously called Nepal “a garden of four varnas and thirty-six castes,” yet the garden was carefully arranged: the Brahmin at its center. The king’s legitimacy was sanctified by ritual — a coronation consecrated by priests, his sovereignty encoded as divine duty.
In 1854, the Muluki Ain codified this order into law, ranking citizens by ritual purity and birth. Brahmins were placed at the top of the moral pyramid; Dalits were trapped at the bottom. Even after the 1951 revolution, the bureaucracy, courts, and education system remained dominated by upper-caste elites. The alliance of throne and temple endured, not as theology — but as social structure. Sacred Power as Governance with King as Vishnu’s Avatar → political legitimacy rooted in divinity and Brahmin priesthood → gatekeepers of purity and ritual access. Muluki Ain (1854) → legalized caste hierarchy as national order. Post-Rana bureaucracy → preserved caste dominance under democracy
II. THE SECULAR PROMISE: A BREAK THAT NEVER FULLY HAPPENED
The 2006 People’s Movement carried a radical dream — to break centuries of ritual dominance and imagine a new republic where every citizen stood equal. When the 2007 Interim Constitution declared Nepal a secular state, it symbolized liberation from divine hierarchy. But the wording was careful — and revealing. “Nepal shall be a secular state, protecting the ancient religions and cultures of the country.” That small clause — “protecting the ancient religions” — carried the weight of continuity. It gave official cover to Hindu practices as “heritage,” while other faiths remained secondary. Thus, Dashain and Tihar became “national” festivals, temple trusts retained state support, and Brahminical rituals remained central to public life. The monarchy fell, but the priestly order simply adapted — from royal court to republic.
III. THE CONTINUITY OF POWER: BUREAUCRATIC BRAHMINISM
In today’s Kathmandu, the bureaucracy wears a modern face but an old soul. High-caste groups — Brahmin and Chhetri — make up less than a third of the population yet occupy the majority of senior government, academic, and media roles. This dominance isn’t accidental. It’s a legacy of educational privilege, social networks, and ritual legitimacy — the invisible architecture of caste. Even parties that fought the monarchy — including leftist and Maoist movements — remain led largely by upper-caste intellectuals. Ritual hierarchies have become bureaucratic hierarchies. The language of power remains Sanskritic. The culture of obedience, inherited. “Nepali secularism hasn’t dismantled Brahminical influence — it has modernized it. The priest became the professor, the pundit turned politician.”
IV. CULTURE AND CONTRADICTION: HERITAGE OR HIERARCHY?
Here lies Nepal’s deepest contradiction: how to preserve cultural identity without perpetuating inequality.
For many, Hindu festivals and rituals are more than religion — they are expressions of Nepali civilization itself. Critics of secularism often see it as a Western intrusion, a threat to national harmony. But reformers push back: what harmony can exist in a tradition that sanctifies exclusion? When Dalits are barred from temples, when women are denied ritual authority, when lower castes must still seek Brahmin permission for the sacred — can heritage truly be neutral? The state walks a tightrope: it guarantees freedom of religion but bans proselytization. It declares neutrality but funds temple trusts. It honors pluralism while celebrating Hinduism as “culture.” The result: a republic still ruled by ritual.
V. NEW FRONTIERS: RECLAIMING THE SACRED
Change, however, is emerging quietly — from the margins outward.
Across Nepal, Dalit families are performing self-led pujas, breaking centuries of ritual dependency. Indigenous groups — Tamang, Limbu, Rai, Gurung, and Newar — are reviving ancestral traditions once labeled “impure” or “backward.” In the cities, a younger generation is turning away from fatalism. They speak the language of equality, not destiny. Their ethics draw less from scripture and more from shared humanity. For them, the sacred is no longer inherited — it is reclaimed. “The true frontier of secularism is not removing religion — it’s redistributing who gets to define the sacred.”
VI. SECULARISM AS STRUGGLE, NOT STATUS
Secularism in Nepal was never a finished revolution. It remains an evolving struggle against centuries of ritual conditioning. The persistence of Brahminical power — in temples, universities, and ministries — shows how deeply belief is woven into bureaucracy. Laws can be rewritten; consciousness takes generations to change.
The question, then, is not whether temples will survive — they will. The real question is: Who gets to stand equally before them? Until sacredness itself becomes democratic, Nepal will remain, as one critic put it,
“a secular state on paper — but ritual in soul.” The Problem with Brahminical Historiography
For centuries, the production of “official” history in Nepal — and South Asia more broadly — has been filtered through a Brahminical lens. This lens defined not only what was recorded, but also what was forgotten.
The voices of women, Dalits, Janajatis, and non-Sanskritic cultures were systematically excluded or reduced to footnotes. Entire civilizations — of the Kirat, Licchavi, Tamang, Magar, Tharu, Newar, Rai, and Limbu peoples — were filtered through the Sanskritic frame of what was considered “civilized.” Whose knowledge counted as history? Oral traditions, folk epics, songs, rituals, and local cosmologies were dismissed as “mythology,” while Brahminical texts were enshrined as “history.” This division — between what counts as fact and what is folklore — is itself a colonial and casteist inheritance.