Monday Sept. 8 Generation Zers in Nepal poured out into the streets. Tuesday the devastatingly ineffective and corrupt Prime Minister KP Oli resigned. Friday evening, interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki is sworn in. Saturday morning, Nepalis wake up to the dawn of a new era in Nepali politics.
Having grown up in Nepal, I know why Nepalis take pride in all the things they do and celebrate all the different things they do. But, returning to Nepal after almost twenty-five years abroad, most of my adult life, I discovered how much all of those things were holding the society and country back and how urgently Nepalis need to rise above them all.
This is a letter to my fellow Nepalis about all the many things we as a people must rise above now and why.
Back in May 2013, based on the word of a 12-year-old I was held in police custody in Doha, Qatar for allegedly insulting Islam. The 12-men-strong board of directors of Qatar Academy, where I was teaching at the time, did NOT push back against the charges brought by the child's father. But, after 12 days in custody, on the 12th of May, I was released from Al Rayyan Police Station.
Now in May 2025, 12 years since the incident, I have something else to report!
Autocratic Shah monarchy and feudal Rana oligarchy entrenched structural discrimination and systemic casteism in Nepal for more than two centuries, structurally privileging the ruling caste, the hill so-called high caste Hindus. Shackled by their legacies in the twenty-first century, Nepal still struggles to make progress. But, even as challenging and daunting as fighting against and correcting them in order to create a just and equitable Nepali society for all may appear, there are ways forward. Education has a major role to play.
In a three-post blog series, I am reproducing the answers Grok 3 provided on the subject. This one--the third and final one in the series--details the way forward.
Autocratic Shah monarchy and feudal Rana oligarchy entrenched structural discrimination and systemic casteism in Nepal for more than two centuries, structurally privileging the ruling caste, the hill so-called high caste Hindus. Shackled by their legacies in the twenty-first century, Nepal still struggles to make progress. But, even as challenging and daunting as fighting against and correcting them in order to create a just and equitable Nepali society for all may appear, there are ways forward. Education has a major role to play.
In a three-post blog series, I am reproducing the answers Grok 3 provided on the subject. This one--the second one in the series--details the legacies of the deliberately instituted structural discrimination and systemic casteism.
Autocratic Shah monarchy and feudal Rana oligarchy entrenched structural discrimination and systemic casteism in Nepal for more than two centuries, structurally privileging the ruling caste, the hill so-called high caste Hindus. Shackled by their legacies in the twenty-first century, Nepal still struggles to make progress. But, even as challenging and daunting as fighting against and correcting them in order to create a just and equitable Nepali society for all may appear, there are ways forward. Education has a major role to play.
In this first of a three-post blog series, I am reproducing the answers Grok 3 provided on the subject. This one details how all that happened and/or how they were all deliberately instituted.
In this blog post, I share the results of using AI to analyze the population of Nepal for its composition by ethnicity/caste/social group. I had AI analyze 2021 national and provincial data o the population disaggregated by different groups.
It's virtually impossible to address a social ill without the society first acknowledging it for what it is. When the education system does NOT do that, what chance is there at all of there even being a discourse about it, forget take steps to address it?! That is the situation with the caste system in Nepal.
The main reason for Donald J. Trump's unlikely victory in the 2016 Presidential Election was the racist Electoral College system of electing a president. The system is racist because it gives more value to the votes of White Americans over those of others. And for that and other reasons, Trump could win the Presidential Election again in 2024.
Nepali society is highly dysfunctional, hollow, and deeply flawed. There are many reasons behind that.
One is that Nepalis struggle greatly to empathize with fellow Nepalis even while they take pride in being born in the same country as the historical Buddha.
Another is that accountability for one's words and actions are virtually nonexistent. The reason? The level of education of the population is low, and even that education is of poor quality, the products of which are people unable to think and reason logically.