15th September, 2015
Press Release
Society for Humanism (SOCH) Nepal thanks the Constitution Assembly of Nepal for endorsing a secular constitution, which is the key to protecting the rights and dignity of all minority groups of the nation. We respect the courage of all constitution assembly members to pass section -1, article-4 and section -3 and article -31 despite the huge pressure from pro Hindu political parties and Hindu protesters.
Now, the Nepali constitution guarantees the right to accept any religion or leave as per the consent of individual.
The fourth major political party in Nepal, Rastriya Prajatantra’s proposal for a vote to remove the key term ‘secularism’ from the new Constitution and revert the constitution to a Hindu state received the vote of only 21 lawmakers out of 601 Constituent Assembly members. As the CA Rules require 61 persons to begin the split voting, the voting was not done.
Nepal was declared a secular state in the interim constitution of 2007 after the success of the People’s Movement of 2006.
SOCH Nepal was struggling for more than a decade to institutionalize secularism in Nepal. SOCH initiated campaigns on secularism by publishing books, articles, workshops and seminars among policy makers and stakeholders consistently since 2004.
Once again we feel the victory of all Nepali people who are in favor of justice, equality, freedom and respect to all religious and non-religious minority groups.
Uttam Niraula
Executive Director
SOCH Nepal
www.sochnepal.org