THE ALGORITHM AND THE TEMPLE: Finishing Nepal's Unfinished Revolution
From Crown to Code: Nepal’s Unfinished Revolution Against Hierarchy
Nepal’s journey to becoming a secular republic was a political earthquake that toppled a 240-year-old monarchy. Yet nearly two decades later, the soul of the nation remains ensnared in the hierarchies that the revolution once vowed to dismantle. The struggle is no longer against divine kingship alone—it is against the silent endurance of Brahminical power. A power that has merely traded its royal crown for the civil servant’s chair, its sacred decree for the bureaucrat’s file.
The late reformer Dharma Ratna Yami understood this truth long before it became fashionable to speak of equality. For him, secularism was not a betrayal of tradition, but a promise to fulfill the equality that tradition had always withheld. He dared to challenge the priestly monopoly in public life—and paid for it dearly. Today, his spirit of defiance finds an unlikely new battlefield Artificial Intelligence.
The ethical struggle to dismantle ancient caste and clerical privilege is now merging with the fight to design responsible technology. The moral demand, however, remains unchanged: no power structure—old or new—should be allowed to legitimize inequality.
The Historical Irony: Bureaucracy as the New Priesthood
For centuries, the alliance between Throne and Temple defined the state. The king’s legitimacy was ritually consecrated by Brahmins, and the 1854 Muluki Ain transformed this cosmic hierarchy into civil law, codifying caste as the architecture of governance.
The republic, on paper, broke that alliance. But in practice, power has simply changed costume. High-caste Brahmins and Chhetris—less than one-third of the population—still dominate the upper rungs of government, academia, and media. This is Bureaucratic Brahminism: the priest has become the professor, the pundit the politician. The sacred language of hierarchy has been translated into the modern lexicon of “merit” and “network”—a bureaucratic code that conceals inherited privilege.
As recalled by senior citizens now in their nineties—formal education in Nepal was largely banned for the general population, especially before 1950. Knowledge was confined to the royal court and Sanskrit schools reserved for the high-born. Common citizens were deliberately kept illiterate; education was considered a threat to divine authority. In this long darkness, only oral history survived—songs, rituals, stories, and collective memory became the people’s archive, carrying the truths the written record refused to hold.
That is why rewriting history remains essential: to tell Nepal’s story without the Brahminical lens that glorified kings and gods while erasing the people. To call conquest what it was—not “unification.” To recognize that Nepal’s true history is a mosaic of Kirat, Buddhist, animist, and Janajati traditions—stories whispered in mother tongues, not recited in Sanskrit.
AI: The Engine to Unmake Human-Made Inequality
Artificial Intelligence could become the most radical democratizing force since the republic itself. Its power lies not in automation, but in transparency—in its ability to illuminate the hidden architectures of inequality that humans pretend not to see.
AI can help map corruption hotspots in procurement and public finance, exposing elite networks invisible to human auditors. It can audit hiring and promotion data within the civil service, revealing structural caste and regional bias masquerading as “merit.”
It can decentralize linguistic power by making government services and education accessible in Nepal’s diverse languages—giving voice to those long silenced by Nepali-only governance. It can democratize opportunity, delivering adaptive education to under-resourced schools and enabling marginalized students to compete with urban elites.
AI can even map the living realities of Dalit and Janajati communities through satellite and unstructured data, ensuring that policy finally sees those it has long ignored. Used ethically, AI becomes not just a tool of efficiency—but an engine for justice. It can complete the “unfinished work of the revolution.”
The Risk and the Roadmap: Automating Bias
AI is no savior. It is a mirror—and mirrors reflect what they are shown. If trained on data steeped in Nepal’s caste and gender bias, algorithms will not erase discrimination; they will amplify it. The machine will become the new Brahmin—an unchallengeable oracle of coded inequality. To prevent this, Nepal needs an equity-first strategy for AI. All government systems must undergo bias testing to ensure zero discrimination in hiring, welfare, or service delivery. Janajati, Madhesi, Dalit, women, and linguistic minorities—must be built into teams developing and auditing these technologies. ICT-enabled community learning hubs with multilingual facilitators, and voice-activated interfaces for low-literacy populations, can close the digital divide. Only when the people who were excluded from yesterday’s classrooms are included in tomorrow’s code can technology truly serve democracy.
Why AI Ethics Boards Are Critical for Sociopolitical Reform in Nepal
The formation of ethics boards is critically important for integrating AI into governance—especially in contexts like Nepal, where historical inequality risks being automated and amplified by new technology. Ethics boards are the institutional mechanism for enforcing a human-centered approach, ensuring that AI systems align with democratic values, social justice, and the constitutional promise of equality.
Guarding Against Algorithmic Bias
In Nepal, data reflects centuries of casteism, patriarchy, and regional exclusion. An AI system trained on this data will inevitably reproduce these biases, embedding discrimination into digital governance. An Ethics Board serves as an independent watchdog, performing pre-deployment ethical reviews on public-sector AI systems—especially those used for resource allocation, recruitment, or welfare distribution. It can reject or demand modification of algorithms that disadvantage Dalits, remote Janajatis, women, or any marginalized group—stopping prejudice before it’s automated.
Ensuring Diverse Representation and Contextual Relevance
AI developers in Nepal are often urban elites, detached from rural and multilingual realities. Without oversight, their systems risk replicating the very social distance they unconsciously embody. The board’s composition is key. It must include social scientists, ethicists, legal scholars, and—critically—representatives from marginalized communities. This ensures AI design is contextually grounded and evaluated against Nepal’s social realities, not just international technical standards, breaking the monopoly of elite expertise.
Maintaining Public Trust and Accountability
When a government system becomes a “black box,” public trust erodes. Citizens begin to believe that technology, like power before it, operates beyond question. Ethics Boards create transparency by requiring public justification for algorithmic decisions in governance. They can investigate complaints of algorithmic bias or error, upholding citizens’ right to explanation and proving that the state’s digital transformation is anchored in democratic accountability.
Setting Ethical Standards for Data Justice
AI depends on vast troves of data—often about the most vulnerable. Without ethical guardrails, data collection can become exploitative or even repressive. The board formulates national standards for data justice, covering consent, sharing, and surveillance. It ensures that efforts to “make invisible populations visible” are done responsibly—protecting anonymity, dignity, and the right to be forgotten, especially for those historically denied control over their own identities.
The Final Revolution
In essence, the AI Ethics Board is the institutional embodiment of Dharma Ratna Yami’s legacy—a reminder that technology must always serve humanity’s higher moral demand for equality and justice. Artificial Intelligence, when guided by ethical oversight and wielded by a citizenry awake to equality, can help complete what Nepal’s revolution began. The real question is no longer whether the temple survives—but whether every citizen stands equally before it, and now, equally before the code.