.Nepal, known once as one of the world’s peaceful countries, saw the kind of extreme violence and inhumanity in the last ten years that the country’s history had never seen before. Although, compared with the world history of revolutions, the loss of the 13,000 lives might not stand out as one of the most mentionable, it has proven to be an unforgettable dark age for all Nepali people. The deaths in Russia, China or even recent Cambodia during their cultural revolutions were far more but they are not to be compared with Nepal because Nepal has a totally different size of population and cultural background. People have lived in harmony and peace for centuries despite the multi-ethnic population.

With the country now being a republic, the people have become free and sovereign in the real sense. At this point, technically, we must all establish the minimum understanding that we do not have any political enemies, at least in the political structural level. We are a people’s republic now. So, violence with any political motif should not be justified any more. But unfortunately, this has not come to be. The war time hangover is still continuing. . And there are causes for that, other than party politics.

When an incident of violence occurs, the crowd psychology takes over the individual personalities and it is possible that, even a normal person, who had previously left home to buy kerosene for his kitchen, might get carried away by the noise and the chaos and ultimately join the violent crowd. This happens either to protect himself from the violent crowd or he is simply hypnotized by the mob psychology to throw stones at the direction the crowd is throwing. This psychology is taking over people day by day. After a decade of violent struggle, we seem to have culturally changed further as we seem to have lost our earlier patience and peace.

We are at a critical moment in which we must make a conscious choice about which path our nation will embark upon as regards to cultural identity. Do we want to define our nation marked by violence, distrust and injustice? Or do we want to define our nation’s identity with a sense of non-violence, honesty, compassion and peace? We know we want peace. The peaceful values have been a hallmark of our history, and I would argue that we must move forward with clarity to stand up for those values.

In developing countries such as Nepal, human values are often attenuated. Over these past two decades, during the revolution, children have been kidnapped, people have been brutally murdered and villages destroyed. In the name of respecting the monarchy, people became sycophants, ignoring political and economic corruption. The few exploited the many and it reached the zenith. And that invited the change that we are seeing today that was long overdue.

At the crossroads in which we find ourselves, we must make a choice to establish peace, love, protection and security. We don’t have control over our past but we can chart our future.

If we want change in our society, we must change the psyche of our nation. This change begins with each one of us. Slamming doors in anger, blaming others for our problems, breaking walls and killing each other won’t bring about reform. Throughout our history, we have been misused more than used for political purposes. It will just bring chaos to our society and to our lives, and, as a result, each individual suffers. We have to recognize that politicians take advantage of our emotional frustrations for their own personal gain and they very well know the mass psychology where each of us can be used as instruments. Taking responsibility for our actions and not dissociating ourselves from reality means accepting the consequence of our actions—as individuals and a society. Violence does not have to be our destiny.

We must not surrender to a psychology of de-individualization, a phenomenon in which people lose their sense of social identity and responsibility, behaving in a way they might not otherwise behave and not taking responsibility for their actions. Violence occurs because people creating violence assume that they are anonymous and thus would not be individually blamed. They can break the street lamps and get away with it. But that hurts the society as it hurts the individual too. It hurts the individual because it plants a criminal attitude further enhanced by impunity.

Just changing the politicians, but accepting violence and victimhood will not forge a better day for our nation. We have to bring reform from within ourselves. We must understand that violence has undermined the value of peaceful culture. But the good thing for us is that it has not yet taken deep root in our psyches and we can all stop it as we believe in peace and non-violence.

The Declaration of a Republic is a great moment of joy for Nepali people all around the globe. Let us hope Nepal will not see any more violence and unrest. The past violence needs a safe landing so that our country can move on the way to peace and prosperity. And we all have to work together for that.