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By Dr. Janardan Subedi

“Please smile, now the bell is ringing,” Manish Jha said while commenting on Balendra Shah’s visit to Janakpur. The line sounded light, yet it carried the ambition of a movement that believes its historical moment has arrived. The bell is not just the RSP’s electoral symbol; it is a metaphor—the promise that Nepal might finally wake from its long political hangover. When Balendra addressed the Janakpur crowd in Maithili, a Kathmandu mayor speaking the language of the plains, greeted with curiosity and applause, it appeared to confirm Jha’s optimism. But beneath the choreography lurks a more complex question: can the RSP truly ring this bell across the country, or will the sound dissolve within Nepal’s familiar architecture of disappointment?

The answer starts with the Constitution. Political stability and development are not created by personalities alone but by the institutional framework that contains them. Nepal’s post-2015 constitution, despite its democratic language, remains structurally conflicted. Authority is fragmented, veto points increase, and elections become costly spectacles rather than effective governance. Parties need vast resources to survive, and in a society where daily survival is uncertain, the logic of maasubhat, one’s daily meal, shapes political morality. The RSP emerged from this exhaustion, promising efficiency without corruption, youth without dynasty, and competence without stale rituals. Rabi Lamichhane and Balendra Shah became twin symbols of the two faces printed on the same coin of expectation. Recognizing these constitutional flaws helps explain the hurdles the RSP faces in translating symbolism into real political influence.

Yet symbols travel faster than substance. Lamichhane’s rise from television crusader to party president is shadowed by allegations of cooperative fraud, financial impropriety, and a nationalism that sometimes follows the camera more than conviction. Shah, celebrated as a rebellious mayor, carries his own file of controversies, demolition episodes, and confrontations with institutions. Admirers call this courage; opponents call it recklessness. The question is not only whether these accusations are true but what they reveal about Nepal’s political imagination. The country increasingly mistakes spectacle for governance.

Representation is another test. It is not cosmetic; it grows from shared wounds, language, and memory. Shah was born and politically socialized in Kathmandu, the center of the state that Madhesis have spent decades challenging. The Tarai is not a suburb of the capital but a region shaped by its own history and long experience of bureaucratic exclusion. Class deepens the distance: Shah comes from an educated urban family, while countless Madhesi households grew up without citizenship papers or quality education. These biographies produce different intuitions about power.

Speaking in Maithili while dressed in native attire created a striking visual, yet symbolism should not be mistaken for belonging. Language uttered from a stage and borrowed clothes do not automatically translate into shared experience. The politics of the plains was forged in curfews, police batons, and long queues outside offices where dignity was negotiated form by form. Cultural performance can invite applause, but representation requires risk taken alongside the community, not a staged visit. Shah’s record remains silent mainly on core Madhesi issues, including citizenship discrimination, federal restructuring, language rights, and proportional inclusion. Without such genuine engagement, the Janakpur moment is more mirage than mandate, underscoring the need for authentic community involvement over superficial symbolism.

One of the most consequential debates Nepal has faced since federalism concerns the status of the Sanatani-Hindu state and the monarchy. Vice President Dr. Swornim Wagle has stated that anyone joining the RSP, assuming it supports these positions, should reconsider. Implicitly, this limits the party’s appeal: RSP will not cater to the population that remains committed to both Hindu state identity and the restoration of the monarchy. For a party aiming to ring the bell nationally, a sizable demographic may remain beyond reach.

Balandra’s visit to the Janaki Temple before delivering his speech, while visually striking, raises another sensitive point. According to Hindu ritual, grieving sons, particularly after the death of parents, are traditionally expected to refrain from temple visits for an entire year. For many in the region who uphold this practice with deep reverence, the sight of a public figure flouting this norm is more than a minor misstep; it is a symbolic rupture. The question emerges naturally: how does the RSP intend to navigate such culturally sensitive terrain? Symbolic gestures may energize crowds, but they can also alienate constituencies whose faith and ritual observances are inseparable from social and moral legitimacy. If the party hopes to ring the bell beyond Kathmandu’s echo chamber, it must demonstrate awareness and respect for such deeply held practices, or risk creating yet another fissure in its claim to national representation.

Nepal’s constitution aims to prevent unchecked power, emphasizing patience and procedural integrity, key to building confidence in governance.

Nepal loves theatrics. It cheers anyone who can deliver a headline, smash a symbolic wall, or dominate a screen, while ignoring whether that person understands budgets, parliamentary procedure, or coalition-building. Public admiration becomes a currency disconnected from governance. Even if every accusation against Lamichhane and Shah were disproved tomorrow, the central dilemma remains: popularity is not preparedness, and spectacle is not statecraft.

This unease has been intensified by accusations that both leaders are creations of Western interests, particularly the mythical “USA deep state.” These suspicions hardened after the tragic Generation-Z protests of September 8–9, when seventy-six young lives were lost, hundreds were injured, and thousands were left with invisible psychological wounds. Who orchestrated what happened? Is former Chief Justice and present Prime Minister Madam Sushila Karki’s assistance in Lamichhane’s legal battles evidence of a hidden design, or simply legitimate counsel? Are ministers resigning to join the RSP proof of ideological awakening, or opportunistic migration toward a rising brand? Is the Barbara Foundation truly pulling strings, or merely serving as a convenient villain in our favorite conspiracy drama? These questions hover like monsoon clouds; they may contain rain or only thunder, but the party cannot pretend the sky is clear.

Can the RSP ring the bell across Nepal? Three obstacles stand in its path. First, the electoral economy: campaigns require money, and money rarely arrives without expectations. Second, organizational depth: movements built around personalities struggle to survive internal democracy. Third, constitutional navigation: governing Nepal demands coalition patience, not revolutionary impatience. Without mastering these disciplines, the RSP risks becoming another episode in Nepal’s serial drama of hope.

For the Madhes, the stakes are sharper. The plains do not need another savior from the hills dressed in borrowed symbolism. They require leaders who understand that citizenship papers can be more revolutionary than speeches, that language rights live in classrooms rather than rallies, and that federalism must be practiced before it is praised. Until such commitments are visible, claims about Shah representing Madhes will remain implausible, and the RSP’s national project will sound hollow in the very region it hopes to embrace.

Nepal has a talent for replacing investigation with imagination. Secret empires and dramatic villains are far more popular than mundane incompetence or procedural clarity. Yet a party claiming to be the future cannot survive on ambiguity. If the bell is to ring beyond Kathmandu’s echo chamber, Lamichhane and Shah must answer not only their supporters but also the anxious parents of the September streets, the skeptical Madhesi voter, and citizens tired of being audience members in someone else’s spectacle. Leadership is not about stunts, viral applause, or charisma alone; it is about systems, patient negotiation, and accountability.

Perhaps Manish Jha is right, and the bell is ringing. But Nepal has learned that bells can announce weddings, schools, and also funerals. The country does not need another orchestra of suspicion conducted by charismatic soloists. It needs plumbers of the state, people willing to crawl through the damp pipes of institutions rather than pose on the balcony of history. If the RSP wishes to be more than a rumor with a logo, it must replace mystery with transparency and performance with paperwork. Otherwise, the promised music will dissolve into familiar noise, and we will once again discover that in Nepal, the loudest bells often hang on the emptiest temples.

I am neither against nor in support of any party. The effort here has been to remain as fair and objective as possible, examining claims and counter-claims through the lens of institutions rather than partisan loyalty. I hope readers will reach their own informed conclusions, and I sincerely hope RSP leaders will read these reflections in the spirit in which they are offered as thoughts from well-wishers who want them to succeed with honesty, humility, and maturity, and who hope the country escapes the old cycle of excitement followed by disappointment. Constructive attention to these issues is not an attack; it is a necessary reality check for any party aspiring to national influence.