A lot has happened since American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin was first published in 2005. The book set off ripples after it won a Pulitzer, but created a tidal wave of interest after Christopher Nolan adapted it for his 2023 blockbuster movie Oppenheimer which is dominating this award season. American Prometheus is a nuanced portrait of a scientist ‘whose brilliance was matched only by his internal conflicts’, and by retelling its protagonist’s life and times the book is a call for rationality in the nuclear age to contain the fearful threat posed by weapons of mass destruction and terror.&nbsp; The book took 25 years to research and write and is a sobering reminder that the doomsday clock is closer to midnight today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. It has been ticking ever since the world’s greatest scientific minds got together in Los Alamos in New Mexico in 1943 to build an atom bomb before the Germans did.&nbsp; Germany surrendered, but that did not stop hawks in the US military to use it to kill 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Americans justified this by saying that a long-drawn assault on the Japanese mainland would have cost a lot more lives. And Oppenheimer himself felt that the first military use of atomic weapons should be so spectacular and destructive that its ferocity would deter future use. The book reminds us that he opposed the detonation of the second bomb over Nagasaki, and the development of the hydrogen bomb. The fact that nuclear weapons have not been used in war for the past 80 years shows the reasoning could have some merit. But it has not stopped nuclear proliferation, and countries like Pakistan, India and North Korea now own atomic warheads as well.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-nuclear-weapons-story-is-not-over">The nuclear weapons story is not over</a>, Nepali Times Speaking with Nepali Times ahead of his session at the Nepal Literature Festival in Pokhara on 17 February, Kai Bird emphasised that the nuclear story is not over, and it could still end very badly: Vladimir Putin’s threat to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, Israel's strategic ambiguity, and Iran's impending nuclear arsenal. Closer to home, Nepal is surrounded by nuclear-armed countries which are not exactly friendly with each other. India has frequent border skirmishes with Pakistan and China, and Nepali soldiers serve in the Indian Army.&nbsp; Amitav Ghosh in his 1999 book Countdown following the Indian nuclear test wrote that even tactical use of nuclear weapons could result in fallout carried by prevailing winds to Himalaya glaciers that could turn Asia’s rivers radioactive and contaminate aquifers. &nbsp; If Middle East tensions escalate into a nuclear confrontation, it will endanger 2 million Nepalis who work there and most will have to return home for safety. Nepali students were killed by Hamas in Israel, and continue to die for Russia in Ukraine.&nbsp; The staunchest critic of nuclear weapons was the architect of the first atomic bomb himself. The book recounts how after the Japanese surrender, Oppenheimer met President Truman and said he felt he had “blood in his hands”. Truman told aides later he never again wanted to see that “son of a bitch … cry-baby scientist”. &nbsp; Oppenheimer used his newfound fame as a celebrity scientist to slow the nuclear arms race. ‘He tried valiantly to divert us from the bomb culture by containing the nuclear threat he helped to set loose,’ the authors write in Prometheus.&nbsp; Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/what-the-movie-oppenheimer-missed">What the movie Oppenheimer missed</a>, Katsuhiro Asagiri But at the height of the anti-Communist McCarthy purges in the 1950s, Oppenheimer was singled out for his peace initiatives in &nbsp;hearings designed to silence and humiliate the scientist.&nbsp; “Oppenheimer became the chief celebrity victim of the McCarthyite witch-hunts. And today around the globe we seem to be experiencing similar xenophobia about immigrants, ethnic and religious minorities and workers disrupted by technology and globalisation,” Bird says in his interview (overleaf).&nbsp; The dense 700-page biography reads like a political thriller that starts with Oppenheimer’s precocious childhood. He is so fascinated by rocks and minerals that the New York Mineralogical Club invites him to deliver a lecture not knowing he is only a 12-year-old boy. He is miserable at Harvard and Cambridge, his mental well-being is put to a test and he is diagnosed with schizophrenia. But he flourishes in Göttingen in Germany where he learns quantum physics. Back in America, his Berkeley department becomes the centre of fundamental research into atomic physics. He supports leftist causes but never joins the Communist Party.&nbsp; Today, there is a theoretical debate about which is worse: all out nuclear war, or climate breakdown. &nbsp;One has more immediate and irreversible implications than the other, but the fact is that both are manmade threats and we have it in our power to remove them.&nbsp; Read : <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/ukraines-lessons-for-sandwiched-nations-like-nepal">Ukraine's lessons for sandwiched nations like Nepal</a>, Bhaskar Koirala Harnessing atomic energy was always a double edged sword. Besides the bomb, many energy planners are pushing for nuclear reactors to be climate-friendly. But atomic reactors have a problem with radioactive waste disposal, and the dangers of Chernobyl or &nbsp;Fukushima type meltdowns.&nbsp; The future may be in fusion reactors, the same physics that drove the thermonuclear bomb that Oppenheimer so staunchly opposed. Fusion is cleaner energy with water as the only by-product.&nbsp; “It is becoming increasingly likely that the problem will not be resolved with renewable energy – which is growing too slowly to make a significant difference – or expensive technologies like carbon capture and sequestration and green hydrogen,” says Nouriel Roubini of New York University’s Stern School of Business. “Instead, we may see a fusion energy revolution, provided that a commercial reactor can be built in the next 15 years.” Oppenheimer said that the only defense against nuclear terrorism was the elimination of nuclear weapons, and in the age of nuclear arms race he was also worried about mankind’s moral survival. His friend, a fellow theoretical physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi said, ‘You drop a bomb and it falls on the just and the unjust.’ In Japan, surviving hibakusha and their descendants continue to suffer genetic defects. In the South Pacific, Kazakhstan and other nuclear test sites, many still suffer devastating health consequences from fallout. The Los Alamos site itself led to inter-generational sickness from radioactive fallout for 15,000 Navajo people living downwind. They were not warned before the test, and they have been forgotten since.&nbsp; American Prometheus reminds us of the urgent need for nuclear arms control in a volatile world. Bird and Sherwin have narrated the moral dilemma and persecution of the inventor of a fearful weapon, coming generations will have to grapple with ways to keep prevent its use. Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/year-of-reckoning">Year of reckoning</a>, Editorial  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2024021515028_d560d5d86980d0c3493c75fd1e4e7e2bb3a91c490d2641329aea2901d6564482.jpg" data-media-id="editor_4" data-image-id="2024021515028_d560d5d86980d0c3493c75fd1e4e7e2bb3a91c490d2641329aea2901d6564482" data-rendition-name="original" width="1136" height="669" loading="lazy" alt="American Prometheus NT"> </figure>

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The destroyer of worlds

I watched the film Oppenheimer in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan where I was going to cover a regional conference to commemorate the International Day against Nuclear Testing. The movie is still not released in Japan due to its sensitive nature. &nbsp; For countries like Japan and Kazakhstan where there are still severe health after-effects of nuclear bombings and testings, the film is disturbing because it only hints at the mass deaths and radioactive sickness that the bombs unleashed. Christopher Nolan does a remarkable job in laying bare the politics behind the making and detonation of the first atomic bomb, and the moral dilemma faced by physicist J Robert Oppenheimer. I only wish he had done more to describe the human dimension of the effects of nuclear weapons ever since the Trinity Test in 1945, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the danger of an unthinkable global nuclear conflagration that persists to this day.&nbsp; The movie does not even address the health impacts and suffering from radioactive fallout on 15,000 Americans living downwind from Los Alamos in the Nevada desert after the tests. The US government’s official explanation remains that the test site was in the middle of nowhere, a narrative the movie chooses not to delve into. Remarkably, the Soviet Union employed a similar justification, dubbing the Semipalatinsk test site in the Kazakh steppe as being 'in the middle of nowhere' to rationalise its 456 nuclear tests, many of which were conducted atmospherically, despite the presence of nearby towns. Intriguingly, the Soviet Union's thermonuclear test, Tsar Bomba, conducted in the Arctic in 1961, led its chief scientist, Andrei Sakharov, down a path of dissent and persecution by the state, mirroring Oppenheimer's own trajectory. Today, the tragic aftermath of nuclear testing persists in northeastern Kazakhstan, near the vast Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, a testing area equivalent in size to Belgium. Children continue to be born with health issues, including cancer and deformities, offering harrowing proof of the inhuman consequences of nuclear weapons. Over 1.5 million Kazakhs endured fallout exposure from 1949 to 1989. On 29 August, 1991 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semipalatinsk_Test_Site" target="_blank">the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site</a> was permanently closed by Kazakhstan, even though it was still a part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan subsequently became independent and the first country in the world to voluntarily turn itself to a non-nuclear weapons state from a nuclear weapons state by abolishing its nuclear arsenal, the fourth largest in the world at the time. In 2009, at the initiative of Kazakhstan, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution, designating August 29 as <a href="https://www.un.org/en/observances/end-nuclear-tests-day" target="_blank">the International Day Against Nuclear Tests</a>, emphasising the significance of this historic closure. The nuclear tests have had a serious impact on the lives of the Kazakhs to this day. The famous painter <a href="https://www.theatomproject.org/en/about/nuclear-weapons-testing-effects/" target="_blank">Kalipbek Kuyukov</a> was born without hands after being exposed to radiation in his mother’s womb. Kuyukov is involved in the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement, which played a vital role in closing down the site and conveys the horrors of nuclear tests through his paintings.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230915120948_577d57e5a2754ad22f86ece9bccb114d8f539ba37032136c7d6713861e70f9f4.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20230915120948_577d57e5a2754ad22f86ece9bccb114d8f539ba37032136c7d6713861e70f9f4" data-rendition-name="original" width="3024" height="4032" loading="lazy" alt="Oppenheimer"> <figcaption>Oppenheimer poster in Kazakhstan. </figcaption> </figure>  Dmitriy Vesselov, a third-generation survivor of Semipalatinsk's nuclear tests, carries the scars of his family's exposure. He suffers from a physical deformity in which his hands are connected by only a few ligaments due to the absence of collarbones. His poignant words serve as a stark warning against those who advocates for the use of small tactical nuclear weapons and limited nuclear war, echoing the collective hope of nuclear victims worldwide. The cumulative power of nuclear detonations at Semipalatinsk dwarfed the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by a staggering 2,500 times. Against the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict and Sino-U.S. tensions, the ominous tick of the Doomsday Clock edges closer to midnight. It is imperative that humanity remembers the grave consequences of military nuclear use and testing.&nbsp; It is worth reminding ourselves that the threats posed by an all-out global nuclear confrontation will be much more serious for life on the planet than the projected impacts of the climate crisis. The regional conference in Astana, organised by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with international partners, participants delved into the humanitarian aftermath of nuclear weapons. This dimension, conspicuously missing in Oppenheimer, took center stage, alongside disarmament discussions among nuclear-armed nations at the Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) held in Vienna. Hirotsugu Terasaki, Director General of Peace and Global Issues at Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a co-host of the regional conference, emphasised the ongoing discussions within the international community surrounding Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). These articles call for state parties to provide aid to nuclear victims, remediate affected areas, and promote international cooperation. Kazakhstan has been appointed, alongside Kiribati, as a co-chair of the working group at the heart of these crucial discussions. While the nine nuclear-armed nations continue to disregard the TPNW and attempt to convince the public of the necessity of nuclear deterrence, it is imperative to recognise that that no matter who may use a nuclear weapon next time, it will be ordinary people like us who will be at the receiving end of this inhumane weapons with inter-generational after-effects. We have to pay attention to the human dimension of the effects of nuclear weapons on the 'Global Hibakusha', or victims of nuclear use, testing and productions including the USA, Russia, Kazakhstan, Australia, Algeria, South Pacific Islands, China, North Korea, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As the second Meeting of States Parties of the TPNW approaches, set to convene at the United Nations Headquarters in New York between November 27 and December 1, the world faces the looming threat of nuclear weapons use. State parties, joined by NGOs and representatives of global Hibakusha, are poised to advocate for a world free from nuclear weapons by endorsing and ratifying the TPNW. Katsuhiro Asagiri is a Japanese journalist with International Press Syndicate (INPS) Japan and project director of 'Towards a World without Nuclear Weapons' and 'SDGs for All'.&nbsp;

What the movie Oppenheimer missed

In addition to bringing devastation to the people of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/ukraines-lessons-for-sandwiched-nations-like-nepal">Ukraine</a>, the war has had severe impacts on the global scale, even raising the spectre of a nuclear weapon exchange. As the conflict drags into its second year, there have been urgent calls for its resolution, and the matter will come up at the G7 Summit of leading industrial nations in Hiroshima from 19-21 May. In February, an emergency special session of the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the early realisation of peace in Ukraine. Among the operative paragraphs of the resolution was one that urged the ‘immediate cessation of the attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine and any deliberate attacks on civilian objects, including those that are residences, schools and hospitals’. Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/90-seconds-to-midnight">90 seconds to midnight</a>, Daisaku Ikeda With that as a first essential step, all concerned parties must come together to create a space for deliberation toward a complete cessation of hostilities. I would like to propose that, as negotiations advance through the cooperative efforts of the concerned countries, they be joined by representatives of civil society, such as physicians and educators who work in schools and hospitals to protect and nurture people’s lives and futures, participating as observers. In March, the leaders of Russia and China issued a joint statement following their summit meeting which read in part: ‘The two sides call for stopping all moves that lead to tensions and the protraction of fighting to prevent the crisis from getting worse or even out of control.’ This is aligned with the resolution adopted by the emergency special session of the UN General Assembly. The <a href="https://www.g7hiroshima.go.jp/en/summit/about/">G7 Hiroshima Summit </a>next week is an opportunity to build on these commitments and develop concrete plans for negotiations that will lead to a cessation of hostilities. I also urge the G7 to commit at the Hiroshima Summit to taking the lead in discussions on pledges of No First Use of nuclear weapons. The Ukraine crisis is without parallel in the length of time that the threat of use and the fear of actual use of nuclear weapons have persisted. Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the hibakusha of those cities, in coordination with the larger civil society movement, have stressed the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons. Non-nuclear-weapon states have engaged in continuous diplomatic efforts, and the states possessing nuclear weapons have exercised self-restraint. As a result, the world has somehow managed to maintain a seventy-seven-year record of non-use of nuclear weapons.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20230509090512_43ed50f0f0bbdd477bc52a0aba3313079bdaf26cdcbedec4f6e9439da3576221.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20230509090512_43ed50f0f0bbdd477bc52a0aba3313079bdaf26cdcbedec4f6e9439da3576221" data-rendition-name="original" width="1207" height="702" loading="lazy" alt="G7 summit"> <figcaption>Karipbek Kuyukov (left) at a gathering of anti-nuclear weapons activists in Tokyo ahead of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima. The Kazakh painter was born without arms because of exposure to radiation from the former Soviet nuclear testing site in Semipalatinsk. Photo: Katsuhiro Asagiri, Multimedia Director of INPS Japan.</figcaption> </figure>  If international public opinion and the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons were to fail to provide their braking function, nuclear deterrence policy will compel humankind to stand on the edge of a precipice, never knowing when it might give way. Since the start of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/ukraine-crisis-hits-nepal-economy-hard">the Ukraine crisis</a>, I have drawn attention to the joint statement by the five nuclear-weapon states (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France and China) made in January 2022, which reiterated the principle that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought’, and called for it to serve as the basis for reducing the risk of nuclear weapons use. Also of important note is the declaration issued by the G20 group in Indonesia last November, which stated: ‘The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.’ The G20 member countries include nuclear-weapon states as well as nuclear-dependent states. It is deeply significant that these countries have officially expressed their shared recognition that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is ‘inadmissible’ — the spirit underlying the <a href="https://disarmament.unoda.org/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/#:~:text=The%20Treaty%20on%20the%20Prohibition,threaten%20to%20use%20nuclear%20weapons.">Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons</a> (TPNW). It is vital that this message be communicated powerfully to the world from Hiroshima. As the G7 leaders revisit the actual consequences of a nuclear weapon detonation and the bitter lessons of the nuclear era, I urge that they initiate earnest deliberations on making pledges of No First Use so that their shared recognition of the inadmissible nature of nuclear weapons can find expression in changed policies. If agreement could be reached on the principle of No First Use, which was at one point included in drafts of the final statement for last year’s NPT Review Conference, this would establish the basis on which states could together transform the challenging security environments in which they find themselves. I believe it is vital to make the shift to a ‘common security’ paradigm. Commitment to policies of No First Use is indeed a prescription for hope. It can serve as the axle connecting the twin wheels of the NPT and TPNW, speeding realisation of a world free from nuclear weapons. Soka Gakkai International (SGI) has continued to work with the world’s hibakusha, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which arose from its parent body IPPNW, and other organisations first for the adoption and now the universalisation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As members of civil society, we are committed to promoting the prompt adoption of policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons, generating momentum to transform our age. <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sokaglobal.org%2Fabout-the-soka-gakkai%2Flives-of-the-founding-presidents%2Fdaisaku-ikeda.html&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7C530ac282429b4975602d08daf631f280%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638092991631893918%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=wxDtf2a8bAHpXRQsESarxm6r2OMbqQQ2Yn9cdYklX2A%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank">Daisaku Ikeda</a> is a peace builder and Buddhist leader, and President of the Soka Gakkai International (<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsgi-peace.org%2F&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7C530ac282429b4975602d08daf631f280%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638092991631893918%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=sAZGJhUq0jZ6zvwMxPxPP5%2FT6fKkD%2FPoZhyzUI9IFko%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank">SGI</a>). <a href="https://www.daisakuikeda.org/" target="_blank">https://www.daisakuikeda.org/</a>&nbsp; Read <a href="https://www.daisakuikeda.org/sub/resources/works/lect/2023apr27-g7-hiroshima-stmt.html" target="_blank">full statement</a>.

G7 in Hiroshima must defuse Ukraine nuclear risk

Home Minister Sudan Gurung resigned on Wednesday following increasing coverage of and criticism over his investment in companies linked to controversial Nepali business figures Sulav Agrawal and Deepak Bhatta, who are currently under investigation for money laundering.
‘I am resigning from the position of Home Minister effective today to ensure impartial investigation into matters associated with me, and to make sure that there is no conflict of interest,’ Gurung wrote, saying that morality and public trust mattered more to him than office.
Gurung ended his message to the nation in English as he invoked the security forces, writing: &nbsp;‘For my country and For the respect of our security forces and For the youths of Nepal.’
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Gurung has become the second member to depart the Cabinet, serving for less than a month, despite the Nepali electorate’s hopes that Nepal would finally get a stable government after the RSP’s sweeping victory in the March elections.&nbsp;
Prime Minister Balendra Shah had sought clarification from Gurung on Wednesday after new details emerged about his shares in two micro-insurance companies, Star Micro Insurance and Liberty Micro Life, which are said to have been issued their licence by the Nepal Insurance Authority at the behest of Bhatta and Agrawal.
Gurung denied financial misconduct, saying that his investment in the two companies was included in his asset disclosure and insisting the misunderstanding is because of how the shares have been categorised.&nbsp;
Leaders within the RSP had called for an internal investigation into Gurung as they sought to maintain the party’s platform of clean governance and transparency. As such, Gurung’s position had become increasingly untenable, especially since former Labour Minister was sacked without being given an opportunity for clarification over a disciplinary breach involving his wife’s appointment to the Health Insurance Board.&nbsp;
On social media, Sah on Tuesday seemed to express dissatisfaction over the PM’s request for Gurung’s clarification.&nbsp;
Judging by the comments under Gurung’s resignation post, a significant part of the Nepali public seems to be firmly on Gurung’s side, blaming the mass media and what they call mouthpieces of old parties for driving him out of the Cabinet.&nbsp;
This is a reflection of his meteoric rise and the continued support he has maintained since he stepped into the spotlight as the leader of Nepal’s youth movement in the aftermath of the September protest.&nbsp;
Gurung has made headlines constantly ever since he burst onto the national stage, which includes questions over the degree of his and his organisation Hami Nepal’s involvement in the September 9 unrest, calls to divulge details behind Hami Nepal’s finances, and not paying five years of rent for an illegal lakefront property in Pokhara.&nbsp;
There have also been unsubstantiated claims, despite Gurung’s denial, about his ‘ties’ to the Free Tibet movement, which has made the Chinese— as well as Nepalis— wary.&nbsp;
As Home Minister, Gurung cultivated an image of a tough but approachabe leader, overseeing a series of high-profile arrests of previous political leadership and business figures even as he posted photos of sleeping in a sofa in his office, and engaged with the public on the streets and on social media.&nbsp;
As it stands, the Home Ministry was a bone of contention between Shah and RSP Chair Rabi Lamichhane before it was awarded to Gurung, who is a close ally of PM Shah. Analysts had noted that with Gurung in charge, the Home Ministry would be a hook for Shah if Lamichhane, with his share of controversies, stepped out of line.&nbsp;
Following Gurung’s resignation, the Prime Minister’s secretariat has said that the PM would take charge of the portfolio for the time being. But it will be interesting to see if and how fresh negotiations for the Ministry unfold within RSP.&nbsp;
And with his supporter base largely intact, it remains to be seen how much of an impact this setback will have on Sudan Gurung’s political aspirations.&nbsp;

Home Minister Sudan Gurung resigns

Sudan Gurung is dancing. It is 2009. He has an emo fringe falling over one eye and is spinning on a polished floor. His dance shows dedication — moves that take years of bruised elbows to land. The clip is 16 years old, and had been sitting in the dead archives of YouTube and old Facebook pages, watched by almost nobody. This month <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@4gr4j/video/7621892206902725909">it has 1.9 million views</a>. Gurung became Home Minister on 27 March and resigned on Wednesday, barely a month into office. His<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@aayvik/video/7626069452177542408"> pre-political life had been put back into circulation</a> at industrial speed -- the b-boying, the DJ sets, and the YouTube video of him dancing in a music clip.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2026042202040_71df4d531423e7c941abde95fb8106346c70ab0afb71bbeb520cc570f14ba178.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="2026042202040_71df4d531423e7c941abde95fb8106346c70ab0afb71bbeb520cc570f14ba178" data-rendition-name="original" width="2300" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="When aura meets audit"> </figure>  The youth of Nepal, well-versed in snappy TikTok edits and aura compilations, turned the archive into a meme economy almost overnight. TikTok remixed the footage to trap beats. The comments settled on a nickname that crossed into everyday speech within days: 'Homie Minister'. <div class="embed-block"><blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@yalexthwreal/video/7622325255792512276" data-video-id="7622325255792512276" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@yalexthwreal" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@yalexthwreal?refer=embed">@yalexthwreal</a> <a title="sudangurung" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/sudangurung?refer=embed">#sudangurung</a> new home minister of Nepal😎 <a title="fyppppppppppppppppppppppp" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyppppppppppppppppppppppp?refer=embed">#fyppppppppppppppppppppppp</a> <a title="sudangrg" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/sudangrg?refer=embed">#sudangrg</a> <a title="home" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/home?refer=embed">#home</a> <a title="minister" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/minister?refer=embed">#minister</a> <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - •⪨н є α я т ❤н α ¢ к є я ⪩• - Music Universe 🎧" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-•⪨н-є-α-я-т-❤н-α-¢-к-є-я-⪩•-7308733170064231170?refer=embed">♬ original sound - •⪨н є α я т ❤н α ¢ к є я ⪩• - Music Universe 🎧</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script></div> As Home Minister, Gurung was in charge of the Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, Department of Immigration, and the country's internal security apparatus. Calling him 'homie' collapsed the distance between that office and the Discord server where the movement that brought him into power had organised itself. What is harder to explain is why the nostalgic clips did the narrative work for Gurung's political standing right up until the moment the paperwork did not. A teenager on a dance floor in a Thamel club, filmed before smartphones had decent cameras, was functioning as political currency for a powerful home minister, while a share registry was quietly filling the other column. The footage was not an argument. Gurung was not doing anything in it that related to home affairs. He was just dancing. The comments compared him to <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@4gr4j/video/7621892206902725909">Korean film heroes</a>. A separate <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@tandavyt7/video/7622151050128018708">48,000-like edit</a> was captioned 'Our New Home Minister Aura'. The replies were full of people saying they got chills listening to him speak. Even after his resignation, most comments on his Facebook page were supportive, saying he had been punished for pursuing truth and justice.&nbsp; Political legitimacy in Nepal has been built out of many things over the last 70 years, but it has never been built out of this. The question was always: what happens when the job starts demanding things his style, boldness, and swag cannot provide. Political aura in Nepal used to be a slow harvest, now it isn't. B P Koirala spent eight years in prison under the Panchayat. He wrote fiction at Sundari Jal. The writing survived, the prison sentences survived, and that experience became the template for what a serious Nepali politician looked like: someone the state had tried to break and failed. Legitimacy was accumulated by having their lives taken away, and refusing to bend the knee. The old mechanics of legitimacy produced politicians who could be audited. The record was made of words, dates, votes, and years behind bars. A voter who wanted to know what a leader stood for read his writings. A journalist digging for inconsistency could find it. The system was slow, often corrupt, and frequently boring. But boring was part of the job description. A minister was supposed to be slightly dull — evidence that the person was doing the unglamorous work of reading files and sitting through committee meetings. Today, boring is a disqualification. The attention economy rewards velocity and visual charge, and a politician who cannot generate either does not exist in the feed, and that means does not exist at all. The legacy parties are still issuing press statements criticising the new guard in the grammar of paper trails and procedural failure. But the audience has stopped reading, users scroll for their next viral bite. Sudan Gurung, unlike the old parties, understood exactly which grammar the feed rewarded. On his first evening as Home Minister, he posted a photo of himself sleeping on a sofa inside the ministry. Caption: creation cannot be greater than the creator, government is not above the people. The image travelled further in 12 hours than any ministerial press release has ever done.&nbsp; A minister napping on a sofa, phone-shot, zero production, read by the public as evidence of a minister who had skipped the motorcade and got straight to work. Gurung used Facebook to announce the names of former ministers and businessmen he intended to arrest. The feed was used to pre-announce state security action.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260422010456_2fa1918e1dd031d01f38b4001ee306d9414073cec0b795fa43a75cb5a8deb8c7.png" data-media-id="editor_6" data-image-id="20260422010456_2fa1918e1dd031d01f38b4001ee306d9414073cec0b795fa43a75cb5a8deb8c7" data-rendition-name="original" width="926" height="868" loading="lazy" alt="When aura meets audit"> </figure>  INFLUENTIAL INFLUENCER This is not how the Ministry of Home Affairs has ever operated. It is how a YouTuber releases a series. Sudan Gurung was a political content creator. As home minister, he was an influential influencer kinetically doing something in the visual medium. Much like Prime Minister Balendra Shah's sunglasses, Gurung's aura, authenticity and swag were a brand asset, instantly recognisable at thumbnail size. Balen's rap career supplies a pre-political archive that authenticates him the same way Gurung's DJ sets and b-boying clips authenticated him. The aesthetic is doing the work a manifesto used to do. The work is authenticity, and the strategy is auramaxxing. The emo fringe predates the ministry. The DJ sets predate Hami Nepal. The b-boying predates the earthquake, the NGO, the September uprising, the interim cabinet, all of it. Whatever Gurung is now, he was already that person before the office existed. This was the real spectacle of the Homie Minister: authenticity. Nepal's youth have grown up watching heavily-polished, talking-point ministers speak in a language aimed at nobody in particular. But that grainy archival clip of the Home Minister from 2009 was honest.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260422010456_5d6dff3a09e8b7e77dc60c3aa567c9e02b6bd5f90f94e20737ec05cc9a09023b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="20260422010456_5d6dff3a09e8b7e77dc60c3aa567c9e02b6bd5f90f94e20737ec05cc9a09023b" data-rendition-name="original" width="1800" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="When aura meets audit NT"> </figure>  The effect transcended GenZ. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@ektapokharel/video/7623242573481561365">A TikTok trend</a> captioned NOT ONLY OUR HOME MINISTER, WE ARE ALSO FROM THAT ERA <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@sonykhadka/video/7624106790266948872">has millennials posting their own</a> archive photos from the same period, aligning themselves with Gurung's pre-political aesthetic. The aura did <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@_thakuri/video/7623397397556645141">cross-generational work</a>. It was a shared legibility, spanning at least 15 years of Nepali youth culture, with the Home Minister standing at its centre.&nbsp; The traditional politician's entire adult life is a performance of identity. Every photograph is lit for the media, every statement is vetted. The persona is the product, and the product has been in development for 30 years. This makes the old guard legible but suspect in the attention economy. A generation raised on authenticity-as-currency reads the decades of careful performance as evidence of something to hide. The polish is the problem. The nostalgic Sudan Gurung party clips inverted this. The polish was absent. The footage could not be performance aimed at the viewer, because the viewer did not exist in 2009 and neither did the political stakes. The clip was therefore read as real, in a way a press conference can never be. It was just a kid dancing, and he happened to grow up to be the Home Minister. But Sudan Gurung's job was never to go viral. The Ministry of Home Affairs requires the person running it to file a complete asset declaration and to avoid holding financial interests in crony entities.&nbsp; None of that work is content. A correctly filed asset declaration does not get remixed into a trap beat. A functioning immigration database is not a TikTok. The paperwork that constitutes actual governance is structurally boring in exactly the way the old parties are structurally boring, and for the same reason. It is the slow, procedural, checkable apparatus that the old system was built to produce and that the new system has not yet learned to replace. And it is painstaking follow-the-money paper trail investigative journalists in the legacy media who uncovered the evidence. You cannot auramaxx your way out of a share registry. You cannot post your way past a conflict-of-interest statute. No amount of fire outfits and wild DJ transitions does anything for you when a journalist pulls the initial shareholder list of Star Micro Insurance and finds your name at number 49, with Rs2.5 million in shares alongside investors linked to Deepak Bhatta and Sulav Agrawal — two men currently at the centre of a Rs 3.7 billion money laundering investigation. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@blox.drop/video/7622173520981658900">Auramaxxing was engineered</a> for the mechanics of reaching office. It is the reason Sudan Gurung became Home Minister and Gagan Thapa did not. The question that had not yet been tested, until this week, was whether the same weapon works when the terrain changes. The terrain does change when you assume power. This week, the answer arrived. TWO CLOCKS Two clocks had been running, and they did not sync. The first clock was built for auramaxxing. A clip posted at eight in the morning peaked by noon. A sofa photo was remixed before the minister had left the building. The feedback loop is fast and legible, and a politician playing this clock gets real-time data on what to post next. The old guard never learned to read it, which is a large part of why they lost the election. The second clock was the one the ministry actually runs on. It measures in quarters, court calendars, and the slow grind of investigation files moving between offices. A share registry takes weeks to pull. A money-laundering case moves at the speed of the prosecutor's office, which is to say, it often does not appear to move at all, until one morning it does. The legacy mass media is fed leaks, and the second clock does not care whether the minister is currently trending. The two clocks collided this week, and the second clock got there first. Faster than anyone expected. The first clock put Gurung in the Home Ministry in weeks. The second clock put him out of it in less than a month. On Sunday evening, Diyopost and Janaastha published documents showing Gurung as a founding shareholder in Star Micro Insurance and Liberty Micro Life — companies licensed by the Nepal Insurance Authority in 2022 following what reporting identified as political lobbying by Bhatta and Agrawal. A photograph also surfaced of Hami Nepal, the NGO Gurung chairs, honouring Bhatta as a donor on 21 December 2021. Gurung's first response was auramaxxed. A Monday Facebook post distinguishing ‘rumours’ from ‘facts’, insisting the shares were disclosed within his broader Rs20 million securities portfolio, promising to cooperate with any investigation. "Allegations and truth are not the same thing," he wrote. "Decisions should be based on evidence, not sentiment." It was a coherent clip, but it did not stop the clock. By Wednesday, Prime Minister Balendra Shah had sought written clarification. Leaders within the RSP itself were calling for his resignation. The opposition Nepali Congress had framed the question as one of democratic transparency.&nbsp; Gurung resigned, posting his decision to Facebook as he did everything else. Ethics, he wrote, hold more weight than any position. There is no power greater than public trust. He ended in English, invoking ‘my country … the respect of our security forces … the youths of Nepal’. Even the exit was content. And this is the asymmetry the office exposed. A politician whose legitimacy is built on fast 30 second videos is structurally exposed to a process that runs slower than the news cycle, because the archive of aesthetic proof was not engineered to answer documentary evidence.&nbsp; It was engineered to displace the demand for documentary evidence in the first place. When that demand returns, as it always does once a politician takes office, the digital archive keeps performing, but the documents keep getting uncovered. And the two tracks do not communicate. The old guard knew this clock because they had no other clock to know. What they lost in charisma they gained in durability: a politician built over 20 years of parliamentary record is harder to dislodge with a single document because they have already survived thousands of documents. The new guard has not been stress-tested against its own paper trail. Sudan Gurung has now been tested, and the test is over, and the template has been written in his exit rather than his survival.&nbsp; A politician can enter office on the strength of a dance clip, and the same class of evidence — share registries, company filings, founding-shareholder lists at number 49 — that would have ended the career of a politician in a previous era of Nepali politics has ended his. The second clock got there. The feed did not save him. Or not entirely. Because the resignation itself is now in the feed. The Facebook post. The 46 brothers and sisters. The epic sign-off. Within hours of stepping down, Gurung had already re-enrolled his exit into the same register that put him in office. The clip of the Home Minister dancing in 2009 is still in circulation. The sofa photo still reads as sincerity. The investigation into the micro-insurance shares will move at the speed of Nepal's prosecutor's office, which is to say, at a speed the feed has long since outrun. The movement that installed Gurung in the name of ending elite capture has had its answer about whether its own hero is subject to the same audit it demanded of everyone else. He walked — or was walked — before the audit ran its course. The resignation was framed as moral choice rather than forced exit, and the framing is already winning. Whether that framing holds is the next test. Auramaxxing, it turns out, is a weapon that works in one direction only: it got him the job, and when the documents arrived, it did not save him. But it may yet save the person. These are not the same thing. If the technique is wounded, it is not yet dead. The next Nepali politician with a pre-political archive and a phone is watching how Gurung exits, not just how he entered. And the answer is: you exit the same way you entered: on Facebook. In your own voice. Before anyone else writes the caption. Whether he comes back is the thing to watch. Whether the technique does is already decided. &nbsp; &nbsp;

When Aura meets Audit

Just three weeks in, Prime Minister Balendra Shah has already shed two ministers, and is having to contend with the economic fallout of the West Asia war plus the global order that it has upended.&nbsp;
The new dispensation in Nepal has aroused interest in New Delhi, Beijing as well as Washington. The ouster of Home Minister Sudan Gurung, whose first act in office was to arrest former prime minister K P Oli, has foreign policy wonks scratching their heads.
The US sent Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Samir Paul Kapur on a special mission to figure out what is happening in Kathmandu. In town at the same time was Cao Jing, Deputy Director General of the Asian Affairs Department of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And Prime Minister Shah is preparing for an official visit to India.
For the Americans, it is mostly about containing China and looking after the welfare of Tibetan refugees, while pushing its own MCC Compact and State Partnership Program (SSP). Beijing is mindful of the post-Dalai Lama era, and does not want instability in Nepal to encourage free-Tibet activities. India lately seems more wary of American activity in what it considers its backyard.
The Chinese appear relieved to see Sudan Gurung go. Only last week, Ambassador Zhang Maoming met Gurung during which he raised the issue of Tibetan and Taiwanese activities in Nepal, seeking firm commitment that Kathmandu would not harbour activities hostile to Beijing.
“Geographically we are close to Tibet and not to the Mainland, so China remains suspicious of us, especially after the TOB and free-Tibet components that emerged from the GenZ protests,” says geopolitical analyst Indra Adhikari.
Kapur, for his part, met RSP Chair Rabi Lamichhane, Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle and Foreign Minister Shishir Khanal. Although investment and infrastructure was on the agenda, the main issue seems to have been about Tibetan refugees. In nearly parallel meetings with ministers, Cao Jing warned Nepal not to be too cosy with the Americans.
For Indian academic and Nepal watcher Sukh Deo Muni, all this harks back to American activity in Nepal during the height of the Cold War. He tweeted: ‘US senior diplomat Paul Kapur's statement in Kathmandu must be understood carefully in New Delhi. He said the US does not want China or any other country to dominate Nepal.’&nbsp;
‘Any other country’ could be a pointed reference to India, and what this means is that Nepal may now have to navigate even more carefully a tri-polar world order reshaped by the West Asia war.&nbsp;
Nepali journalist based in New Delhi Akanshya Shah agrees that the United States may not be seeing Nepal through the Indian lens anymore, while New Delhi does not want heightened US activity in what it considers its sphere of influence. All this is further complicated by recent frostiness in Washington-New Delhi ties.
“New Delhi doesn’t have that familiarity factor it used to with old leadership in Nepal, but it is curious about what the young Balen Shah will do and what kind of relation he will pursue with India,” she adds. “Certain decisions of the Balen government such as ending VIP culture and delivering passport at homes have hugely resonated with the Indian people, he has in some ways become a role model among the youth in India as well.”
India has invited Prime Minister Shah for an official state visit, which will be his first foreign trip as per tradition. Shah graduated in structural engineering from a college in Bengaluru, and knows India well. Shah has injected religious elements into his public exposure as prime minister and this could help project Nepal’s ‘soft power’ in dealing with India.
But he has also been a nationalist on the Limpiyadhura map dispute, and there are other thorny issues like air connectivity, river projects and power exports that need to be ironed out.&nbsp;
Sukh Deo Muni warns that the old Indian diplomatic approach based on religio-cultural stakeholders in Kathmandu may not work anymore. He wrote: ‘India's Modi government must prepare itself well to deal with new Nepalese leadership and their empowered support base, which is self-confident, highly nationalist, aspirant and impatient.’
The RSP’s 22-page National Commitment document said Nepal should abandon its historical ‘buffer state’ identity to serve as a ‘vibrant bridge’ between regional and global powers. Much of this debate is theoretical, and there is much navel-gazing that distracts from regional realpolitik.&nbsp;
“Whether we are a buffer state or a vibrant bridge, in today’s heightened geopolitical scenario we have to have good relations with good neighbours,” explains Akanshya Shah. “What is of paramount importance is that our ties are based on the aspirations of the young generation, so that they are engaged.”
Indra Adhikari goes as far as to say that the concepts of “buffer state” and “vibrant bridge” have both failed and Nepal is neither. “We have had zero roles in mediating or de-escalating the tensions between India and China to call ourselves a buffer state. As a vibrant bridge, we cannot facilitate trade of the two countries. The new government should have researched and consulted more before proposing the same outdated and failed foreign policy concepts.”&nbsp;
What will be much more important for Prime Minister Shah is to continue Nepal’s traditional policy of ‘equidistance’ and convince his interlocutors that it is not an anti-Indian stance.&nbsp;
“At a time when there is increased interest of big powers in Nepal, we need to do a bit of our own homework for the systemic reforms we want,” says Akanshya Shah. “As for India, we first need to clearly define what we want on connectivity, energy and culture. But most importantly, we have to capitalise on the goodwill of India which we haven’t been able to in the past.”
Adds Indra Adhikari: “When it comes to fundamental aspects of foreign policy that ensures and enhances the well being of our citizens, national parties should all have one unified voice that doesn’t change when the government does. Only then the future generations can own it.”

Love thy neighbours (and America)

Prime Minister Balendra Shah sought written clarification from Home Minister Sudan Gurung following news of his investment in two companies linked to controversial Nepali business figures Sulav Agrawal and Deepak Bhatt, who are currently at the centre of a Rs3.7 billion money laundering investigation.
Home Minister Gurung's secretariat said that it has responded to the PM and submitted a written explanation. This comes after Home Minister Sudan Gurung issued a public clarification about the new developments regarding his investments on Monday.&nbsp;
Gurung is listed as a founding shareholder of two micro-insurance companies Star Micro Insurance and Liberty Micro Life, having acquired shares amounting to Rs2.5 million. The two companies are said to have been issued their licence by the Nepal Insurance Authority at the behest of Bhatt and Agrawal. Family members and close aides of both Bhatt and Agrawal have stakes in the two companies.&nbsp;
Bhatt, chairman of Infinity Holdings, is a power broker accused of using his political connections to secure and manipulate public procurement contracts, influence policy changes ass well as leadership appointments to regulatory institutions including the Securities Board of Nepal and Nepal Insurance Authority.&nbsp;
Meanwhile, Shanker Group vice-chair Sulav Agrawal was also arrested earlier this month as part of a broader money laundering probe as well as an investigation into the group’s finances. Agrawal was previously arrested during the Covid-19 pandemic after he was found selling &nbsp;67 infrared thermometers from a vehicle with diplomatic credentials. At the time, Bhatt is said to have used his connections to facilitate Agrawal’s release.&nbsp;
Critics have raised concerns the lack of detailed disclosures on Gurung’s part about investments tied to the very figures that his Home Ministry is in charge of investigating. There are also questions as to the source of his investment, which Gurung said in his clarification were raised through loans.
In his clarification, Gurung denied concealing his investments, saying that his shares in the two companies are part of in his over Rs20 million portfolio included in his asset disclosure and insisting the misunderstanding is because of how the shares have been categorised. &nbsp;
On his name and portfolio being associated with controversial figures, he responded, ‘There are hundreds to thousands of shareholders in a company. Buying shares does not constitute a partnership with anyone.’&nbsp;
He continued: ‘If that is the basis, then everyone with investments in those companies must be held accountable, which is not fair. Investments in the companies include those from media houses and banks. Are they all guilty?’
Leaders within the RSP have called for internal investigation into Sudan Gurung, to maintain the party’s platform of clean governance and transparency.&nbsp;
This comes after the sacking of Labour Minister Dipak Sah earlier this month after the RSP found him to be in breach of the party code of conduct following the reappointment of his wife to the Health insurance board. Sah was not given the opportunity for clarification prior to his departure.&nbsp;
Critics have said that the party is reverting to the patronage-driven politics of previous leadership following the appointment of figures close to RSP leadership in various key positions.
Many influential business owners elected to the House with direct stakes in the business, finance, tourism, and infrastructure sectors sit in Parliamentary Committees that would directly benefit their interests. &nbsp;
On Monday, RSP appointed Bhupdev Shah, who previously was a part of Balen Shah’s secretariat during his tenure as Kathmandu Mayor, as the party’s general secretary. Some have questioned the party’s decision to appoint Shah without going through an election process in its upcoming general convention.&nbsp;
Shah’s appointment comes as there is increased public attention over members of the Prime Minister’s inner circle being appointed to key advisory positions as well as to head governance reform committees.