National Unity Day
THE nation celebrated 279th Prithivi Jayanti and National Unity Day Wednesday
by organising varieties of programmes and paying tribute to His late Majesty Prithivi
Narayan Shah the Great. The nation and Nepalese people are always grateful to His late
Majesty Prithivi Narayan Shah for his tireless efforts and contribution to unify scores of
tiny principalities into one strong nation. At a time when imperial power had already
taken over the entire South Asia, Nepal was divided into several small principalities,
which were hostile to one another. For the imperial power, it would not have been
difficult to take those tiny principalities if His late Majesty Prithivi Narayan Shah had
not unified Nepal and adopted a far-sighted approach to keep the imperial power at bay.
His late Majesty Prithivi Narayan Shah laid the foundation of a unified and strong Nepal
while his successors added bricks to it and consolidated Nepal’s nationalism. As a
result, we are now proud to call ourselves the sovereign citizens of a sovereign country.
His late Majesty Prithivi Narayan Shah not only laid the foundation of a unified and
strong Nepal, he also provided guidelines for governance, foreign policy and nationalism
of the country, which is still followed and applied in different ways. His Dibyopadesh are
as valid and relevant today as they were more than 250 years ago. Referring to the ethnic
and cultural mosaic of the country, His late Majesty described Nepal as a garden of four
castes and 36 sub-castes. Similarly, he provided guidelines for the country’s foreign
policy describing Nepal as a ‘yam between two boulders’. Recently, some elements
made their vein attempts to instigate people against long cherished social and communal
harmony in the country. However, people understood the hidden ulterior motive in time and
the government foiled it. As Nepal’s nationalism, sovereignty and territorial
integrity lies on the social harmony and mutual cooperation among different ethnic
communities, His late Majesty Prithivi Narayan Shah’s Dibyopadesh serve as very
important guidelines for building national feeling and nationalism in Nepal. Against this
background, Minister for Information and Communication Jaya Prakash Gupta said that social
fabric existing in the country from the time immemorial needs to be preserved and further
consolidated in order to maintain national unity and strengthen feeling of nationalism.
The celebration of the National Unity Day prods us to make collective efforts to
consolidate nationalism and maintain national unity by countering the conspiracy and
attempts to disturb social and communal harmony. Perhaps, this year’s National Unity
Day carries this message to all people in the country.
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