We live in an era where our children are gradually losing the physical feel of books. Their eyes are permanently glued to the cold glow of screens, their attention spans shattered into 15-second fragments. Our ancient texts give us the beautiful, foundational maxim: Vidya dadati vinayam—true knowledge yields humility. But on the cynical side of our reality, we must admit that simply celebrating Saraswati Puja once a year does not magically bring knowledge into a vacuum. We excel at the passive rituals of education; we bow deeply before idols, paint letters on stone walls, and treat books as sacred talismans to be worshipped from a distance. But a ritual blessing cannot structure a human mind. You cannot inherit wisdom by merely putting a tika on a cover. You have to open the text and do the heavy, deliberate work of reading.

True depth of thought cannot be inherited from the fantasy worlds of Harry Potter, the echo chambers of Discord or the shallow, reactionary chatter of TikTok. Social media is structurally incapable of providing that calibre of systemic information and structural knowledge. When we look at the younger generation today and wonder why they lack critical depth, the answer is glaringly obvious: They lack the right kind of cognitive stimulation.

If I were appointed the Education Minister of Nepal, I would immediately launch a targeted library mission on day one, dispatching work orders to break ground on that empty, contested plot of land in Jamal. It is a prime piece of real estate spanning seven ropanis in the heart of Kathmandu that is practically begging to be salvaged for the intellectual preservation of our society.

Legacy of the starved mind

Historically, the underlying logic of governance in this country was brutally transactional: “If the people read, they become smart; if they become smart, they will oppose the government—so let us not feed their minds.”

I remember a time when this paranoia was so thick that the state routinely weaponised the clock against information. Indian newspapers were intentionally delayed at our borders and allowed into the hands of citizens only after a full day had passed. The strategy was brilliant in its cruelty: By freezing the text for 24 hours, the apparatus castrated the urgency of global events, ensuring that the spark had already been smothered by the time a Nepali citizen read it.

Yet, despite these filters, books remained the ultimate underground weapons of resistance. During the darkest periods of political imprisonment, complex English-language books were routinely smuggled into dark prison cells for our detained leaders. The jail keepers, completely blind to the potency of the text, let these volumes pass simply because they could not comprehend the language. Leaders like BP Koirala and Kisun ji devoured these smuggled works first, carefully circulating them among the small circle of fellow prisoners who could read.

In fact, the notorious cells of Nakkhu, where Kishun ji and Yog Prasad Upadhyay were placed, were transformed into an underground school and university, and the faculty was forged from the sheer willpower of the detained. Kishun ji kaka and Yog Prasad Upadhyay baba, who fought tirelessly on the front lines for Nepali democracy since the 1950s, were the literal schoolmasters behind those heavy bars. More than a fighter, baba was a foundational architect of this country, belonging to that pioneering first generation that built the very dawn of modern Nepali bureaucracy and civil administration out of the post-Rana vacuum.

Yet, when the political tides turned, the very state structure he helped design locked him inside the darkness of Nakkhu. Rather than yielding, he became the English guru to a desperate group of political prisoners, while Kishun ji kaka taught them the international vocabulary of law, history and civic defiance. Under that forbidden guidance, Nakkhu became an incubator for academic and political excellence. Inmates actively studied, eventually forcing the state to let them sit for their formal exams from within the prison walls. They took the ‘iron gate’ of the nation’s education system and shattered it from the inside out.

But what is stopping the apparatus now? Are our current leaders still operating along those same feudal, paranoid lines?

The answer was laid bare in July 2020. The blueprints for a magnificent seven-story facility for the Nepal National Library were fully completed. The state had already spent Rs24 million clearing the seven ropanis of land in Jamal and securing metropolitan approvals. The international e-tendering process was live, and the estimated total cost to build a world-class central library was a modest Rs740 million—a microscopic sum that any international educational grant or allied country would have rushed to fund if given a transparent opportunity.

Yet, right at the finish line, the entire project was abruptly stopped by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli in 2020 through a sudden, unannounced Cabinet ‘stop-work’ order. The political class understands that if the youth are given an open, world-class sanctuary to read unrestricted history, international philosophy and comparative politics, they will become genuinely learned. And a deeply read, critically thinking population will never blindly swallow dogmatic party lines or follow a rigid communist blueprint. To control a population, you must starve their capacity to cross-examine your slogans.

Atmospheric shield of the printed word

Human culture is born from being physically close to books. The unique, quiet atmosphere that a great library creates alters your very mindset the moment you cross the threshold. Intellectual stamina requires a space that is within the reach of a young person’s daily life—and that is why the location matters. It must be in Jamal, a primary transit and cultural heart of the capital, where any student can reach it, completely on their own.

If our political class wants to imitate the West constantly, it must stop imitating the mere surface-level hardware. Simply copying a political system or endlessly altering the constitution does not cut it. You need deeply trained, independent minds to manage a political system, and that capacity comes solely from reading books. That is why it is vital to invest the money there.

The space in Jamal is a glaring symbol of our current national priorities. Leaving it vacant while complaining about the decay of youth discipline is an act of political hypocrisy. By transforming that plot into a state-of-the-art sanctuary for books, we would send a definitive signal to the next generation: Your mind matters, your ability to think deeply is an absolute priority, and your literacy is the shield with which you will navigate a crooked world. Our children have waited long enough for a room of their own.