A crowd can become violent in minutes. A government can authorize force in seconds. But the consequences of a single bullet can last for generations. That is the uncomfortable lesson Nepal must learn as religious and communal tensions simmer across parts of the Terai/Madhesh.
What begins as a dispute over a mosque, a religious flag, a procession, loud music or an alleged insult can now travel with a lightning speed—from a street corner to a smartphone screen, from social-media platforms to counter-protests, and from confrontation to curfew. In such an environment, the greatest danger is that communities may clash and the state, frightened by disorder, may respond with excessive force before it has fully understood what it is confronting.
The recent violence in Sunsari should therefore be viewed as more than another episode in Nepal’s familiar cycle of protest, deployment and curfew. It is a warning about something more consequential- what happens when political authority meets the trigger of a loaded weapon in the hands of an officer operating amid confusion, fear and incomplete information. The question Nepal must answer is not merely who started the violence. It is who bears responsibility when the state decides how that violence will end?
That question matters because the government possesses a supreme authority- use of legitimate coercive power. Police and security forces can detain, disperse, restrict movement and, in the most exceptional circumstances, use lethal force. But the authority to use force carries a corresponding obligation to restrain it. The state cannot claim the power to pull the trigger and then disclaim responsibility for where the bullet lands. No power is absolute.
Nepal’s communal tensions are therefore not only a security problem. They are a test of current governance, institutional maturity and the moral limits of state power.
A Fault Line Beneath the Surface
Recent events suggest that Nepal’s communal tensions cannot simply be reduced to a Hindu-Muslim binary. In January, tensions between Hindu and Muslim communities escalated in and around Birgunj following the reported vandalism of a mosque in Dhanusha. In March, another confrontation in Maharajgunj Municipality of Kapilvastu reportedly injured 23 people, including 11 Nepal Police personnel.
The most serious recent escalation occurred in Sunsari in late July, when a dispute reportedly involving loud music and religious flags during a Hindu religious event developed into violent confrontation. The unrest subsequently spread into neighboring areas, including Siraha, prompting curfews and heightened security measures.
The significance of these incidents lies not only in the violence itself, but in how quickly seemingly localized disputes can acquire communal meaning. The Terai/Madhesh is uniquely historically complex. Hindu, Muslim, Madhesi, caste, linguistic and cross-border identities overlap in ways that can turn a local grievance into a broader political or communal issue. The region’s deep social, economic and cultural connections with northern India can also give events across the border resonance within local communities.
Political actors can further complicate this environment when identity becomes an instrument of mobilization. None of this makes communal conflict inevitable. But it makes institutional competence indispensable. Nepal’s traditional image as a relatively tolerant, multi-religious society has depended heavily on informal coexistence. Hinduism remains predominant, but Nepal is constitutionally secular and home to Buddhist, Muslim, Kirat, Christian and other religious communities. The danger arises when coexistence begins to fracture under the pressure of identity politics, local grievances and perceptions of unequal treatment. A dispute can rapidly change from “Who committed the offense?” to “Our community is under attack.” Once that psychological shift occurs, facts become less important than identity. And identity is combustible.
The New Accelerant Variant: Social Media
There is another factor Nepal cannot afford to underestimate: the speed of information.
A provocative video, photograph, slogan or allegation can circulate through social media before authorities have established the facts. As rumor circulates, outrage triggers mobilization. Mobilization invites confrontation. This has fundamentally changed the operating environment for law enforcement agencies. A police commander once had hours to assess a developing disturbance. Today, a rumor spreads across communities before the first official report reaches headquarters. That is why communal tension cannot be managed simply through more personnel, more barricades or more firearms. It requires better intelligence, faster verification, stronger community liaison, credible public communication and disciplined use of force. Authorities must be able to answer three questions quickly:
What happened? Who is responsible? And what can be done before the dispute becomes collective punishment? If government communication fails, social media will fill the vacuum. And social media rarely fills a vacuum with restraint.
The Most Dangerous Moment Is When the State neglects Ground Realities
There is an uncomfortable truth about law enforcement that political leaders sometimes forget- officers on the ground do not experience a crisis from a minister’s desk. Neither the nodal ministers may substitute the foot soldiers on the ground. Law enforcement personnels experience it through noise, smoke, crowds, stones, conflicting instructions, incomplete information and fear. A commander confronting a rapidly deteriorating situation may have only seconds to decide whether to advance, withdraw, negotiate, disperse, employ less-lethal options or authorize firearms. That is the operational fog of uncertainty where many decisions goes wrong.
Military and law-enforcement professionals understand the logic of the OODA loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. But in a rapidly deteriorating public-order situation, those stages can collapse or overlaps in seconds. That is precisely why political leaders must exercise extraordinary caution when directing security agencies to use force. An order that sounds straightforward from a government office can become profoundly ambiguous in the street.
A commander may interpret it differently from the officer beneath him. An officer may interpret the threat differently from the commander. A frightened crowd may interpret a warning differently from the security forces. Darkness, smoke, misinformation and panic can magnify every error. The political leader sees the objective, the commander sees the operating processes, the officer sees the immediate threat, the civilian sees the weapon. All four perspectives matter. When they become disconnected, tragedy becomes more likely.
Lethal Force Is Not a Shortcut to Public Order
A crowd can sometimes be dispersed through overwhelming force. But restoring silence is not the same as restoring peace.
If the price of restoring order is an unjustified civilian death, the state may suppress the immediate confrontation while creating a grievance capable of generating the next one. This is particularly dangerous in communal conflict. One death can become a symbol. A symbol can become a rallying cry. A rallying cry can become another confrontation. The cycle feeds itself.
The use of force must therefore be governed by necessity, proportionality, accountability and self-defense—not adrenaline, revenge or fear. This principle protects civilians. It also protects police officers.
An officer confronting a violent crowd deserves clear rules, appropriate equipment, adequate training and a functioning command structure. Asking officers to make impossible decisions without proper preparation is not leadership. Nor should political leaders issue vague or overly broad directives and later distance themselves from the consequences. The answer is neither impunity nor scapegoating. It is accountability.
Responsibility Travels Down the Chain—and Up It
Accountability must operate in both directions. If an individual officer unlawfully kills or injures a civilian, that officer must answer for the conduct. But accountability cannot stop at the person holding the weapon.
Senior officials who establish operational policy, commanders who issue orders and political leaders who authorize extraordinary measures must also accept responsibility for decisions made under their authority. This is not an argument for punishing commanders whenever an officer makes an honest mistake under extreme circumstances. It is an argument against positional impunity.
The state cannot demand obedience from its security institutions and then deny responsibility when the consequences of that obedience become politically inconvenient. At the same time, accountability must not become a political weapon against security personnel who acted lawfully and proportionately under genuine threat. The appropriate response is evidence-based investigation. Independent investigation. Transparent investigation. And where wrongdoing is established, consequences.
Nepal Needs Prevention, Not Merely Reaction
Nepal should treat recent incidents as an early-warning signal rather than isolated law-and-order episodes. The government must initiate the following steps:
First, local mechanisms for communal early warning should bring together police, local government, religious leaders, civil society and community representatives.
Second, security agencies need specialized training in communal conflict, crowd psychology, negotiation, de-escalation, human rights and graduated use of force.
Third, every deployment involving multiple security agencies must have a clear command-and-control structure. Confusion among agencies becomes particularly dangerous when civilian lives are at stake.
Fourth, authorities need stronger mechanisms for rapidly verifying and correcting inflammatory misinformation before rumors become mobilization tools.
Finally, every civilian death resulting from state firearms during public-order operations should trigger a credible review. The objective should not be to criminalize policing. It should be to establish whether the force was lawful, necessary and proportionate—and whether command decisions contributed to the outcome.
The State Inherits a Moral Contract
When a government assumes control of the instruments of internal security—the police, armed forces and intelligence apparatus—it does not merely inherit an administrative function. It inherits a moral contract with every civilian life within the reach of those instruments. This is positional responsibility in its clearest form. Position creates power. Power creates obligation. Obligation creates liability when it is violated. There is no political necessity, sovereign authority or institutional hierarchy that permanently breaks that chain.
When a political leader invokes internal security to justify lethal force, that leader does not diminish responsibility. The leader doubles it. The decision to authorize force is itself an assertion of judgment. And anyone who claims the authority to direct force must also accept responsibility for where that decision leads. You cannot claim authority over the order and disclaim authority over its consequences. That is not good governance. It is impunity dressed in sugar-coated official language. The arbitrary loss of civilian life is not collateral damage to be footnoted in a security briefing. Each death is a specific moral event with a specific chain of human decisions behind it.
Political necessity does not suspend moral accountability. It concentrates it.
Nepal should not wait for communal violence to become a permanent political fault line before learning this lesson. The streets may eventually become quiet. Curfews may be lifted. Security forces may return to their barracks. Political leaders may announce that normalcy has been restored. But quiet is not necessarily peace.
Peace is what remains when victims believe justice is possible, when communities believe the state will protect them equally, and when security personnel know that they will be supported when they act lawfully—and held accountable when they do not. That is the standard Nepal must pursue. The state has every right to defend its citizens against violence. It has a duty to restore public order. But neither authority nor urgency provides a blank cheque for the use of force.
The more dangerous the situation becomes, the greater—not lesser—the obligation to exercise judgment, restraint and accountability.
A police officer facing a violent crowd may have only seconds to decide. A commander may have only minutes to interpret a rapidly changing situation. But political leaders have something those officers do not: the responsibility to create the rules, training, command structures and safeguards that govern those seconds. They cannot escape that responsibility afterward. The bullet does not distinguish between Hindu and Muslim, Madhesi and Pahadi, protester and bystander. That is precisely why the hand holding the weapon must distinguish and act in good faith. And behind that hand must stand training. Behind training must stand command. Behind command must stand law. And behind the law must stand political accountability.
Nepal’s real challenge is therefore not simply to prevent the next communal clash. It is to ensure that when the next crisis comes—and it will—the state does not become part of the crisis it is supposed to resolve. Because the ultimate measure of a government is not how effectively it can deploy force, it is whether administration can exercise power without losing its control. The state inherits the power to use force. But it also inherits a moral contract with every civilian within its reach. Power creates authority. Authority creates responsibility. Responsibility creates accountability. Break that chain, and governance becomes impunity. Preserve it, and even in the most combustible moment, the state remains what it is supposed to be: the protector of the people—not the source of their fear.
Disclaimer: Durga Kunwar is a public policy expert educated at George Mason University and a country risk analyst certified by Cornell University. A former senior law-enforcement official from Nepal, he brings more than two decades of experience in security, governance, and public policy. He is also a Human Rights Consultant affiliated with the United States Institute of Diplomacy and Human Rights. He writes on democracy, security-sector reform, international relations, and South Asian politics, with a particular focus on governance, political transformation, emerging security challenges, and the intersection of technology and society.
–The views and opinions expressed are solely his own and do not represent those of any institution or organization with which he is affiliated.
