Shrawan 1, 2083, is an important day for the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, better known as CNAS. It is a day to remember its history, recognize its contributions, and think seriously about its future. Birthdays are occasions for celebration, but for an academic institution, they should also be moments of self-examination. What has the institution achieved? What problems does it face? What new responsibilities should it accept?
CNAS is one of the university's four research Centres and one of Nepal's oldest institutions devoted to the systematic study of the country and the wider Asian region. For decades, it has brought together scholars from different fields to study Nepal's history, society, culture, politics, languages, development, and relations with the outside world. Its birthday matters to all who believe that Nepal must produce serious knowledge about itself.
A long institutional journey
The roots of CNAS go back to 1966, when the Tribhuvan University Syndicate proposed the establishment of the Institute of Nepalology, or Nepal Adhyayan Sansthan. The name was accepted in principle in 1968, and the institution began functioning in 1969.
Under the Tribhuvan University Act, 1971, it was renamed the Institute of Nepal and Asian Studies on July 16, 1972, with responsibilities covering both teaching and research. In 1977, it was transformed into the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies.
These were more than changes of name. "Nepalology" expressed the need to study Nepal systematically. "Nepal and Asian Studies" placed Nepal within a wider regional setting — since its religions, languages, cultures, trade routes, migration patterns, and political relations have always crossed present-day national borders. The journey from Nepalology to CNAS was a journey from studying Nepal as a separate subject to studying Nepal in relation to Asia and the world.
Why CNAS matters
Nepal's history, society, geography, languages, religions, cultures, politics, and development challenges are deeply interconnected, and no single academic discipline can fully capture this complexity. This is why CNAS brings together researchers from History, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Rural Development, Nepali, English, Linguistics, and Culture.
A university department normally focuses on one discipline. CNAS can bring several together around a common problem: migration may require sociology, history, economics, and language studies at once; national identity may involve culture, ethnicity, law, and international relations. This multidisciplinary character is the Centre's core strength.
CNAS was established to study national integration, modernization, development, ethnic diversity, political values, cultural change, population, migration, gender, environment, and language, while also building academic links, supporting scholars, maintaining bibliographic information, and organizing seminars and publications. These responsibilities remain urgent, as Nepal continues to face questions of social inclusion, national unity, federalism, migration, cultural preservation, environmental change, security, tourism, and relations with neighboring countries. CNAS must examine these issues independently, critically, and with a long-term national perspective.
Building Nepal's scholarly memory
One of the most important contributions of CNAS has been its publications. Over many decades, the Centre has published roughly four hundred books, along with research reports, monographs, journals, and dozens of unpublished discussion papers — including Contributions to Nepalese Studies, Nepal Adhyayan Journal, the Strategic Studies Series, and CNAS Forum.
These are not simply printed materials; they are part of Nepal's scholarly memory. Through them, researchers have examined the country's history, society, political change, language, religion, culture, strategic affairs, and regional relations, while providing a platform for Nepali and international scholars working on Nepal.
A research institution survives through the knowledge it preserves and shares. Buildings age and leadership changes, but published research can continue to guide future generations. CNAS is accordingly giving high priority to digitizing its older journals, reports, books, bibliographies, maps, and documents. Much valuable research remains difficult for students and researchers to access; a strong digital archive would let scholars in Nepal and abroad draw on the Centre's accumulated knowledge, and would increase the global visibility of research produced in Nepal.
Current research
CNAS has adopted a blended research model, combining ongoing faculty research with collaborative projects. Current areas include nationalism, tourism, history, culture, religion, politics, linguistics, and other social issues, including a National Priority Area Research Project on tourism supported through Tribhuvan University's Innovative Research Grants.
The Centre is also participating in international collaborative projects, won through global competition: one strengthens social work practice education in Nepal through the European Union's Erasmus+ program; another examines how troop-contributing countries bring UN peacekeeping norms back into their domestic institutions, supported by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council and conducted with universities abroad.
CNAS hosted the Indian Council for Cultural Relations Chair on May 16, 2022 and welcomed scholars from South Asia, the wider Asian region, Europe, and the United States. It holds institutional relations with academic bodies in France, Japan, the United Kingdom, China, South Korea, and elsewhere, and is an institutional member of the UNESCO-ICCROM Asian Academy for Heritage Management.
A new research question
Alongside these activities, the Centre is exploring a new intellectual direction through कः, or Ka-Praśna. Most research begins with familiar questions — what, why, who, where, when, how. Ka-Praśna asks whether inquiry should begin even earlier: before asking "What is this?", we may need to ask how the object of inquiry came to be identified, named, located, and understood.
This is still an emerging field of thought, one that must be developed through careful research, criticism, and open academic discussion. It raises a real question: must Nepal always depend on concepts and theories developed elsewhere, or can ideas rooted in Nepal and South Asia also contribute to global knowledge?
Ka-Praśna also opens a question about sovereignty itself. National sovereignty, under the Westphalian model, is defined through the regulation of citizens by citizenship, passport, and visa. But the free movement of Nepali and Indian citizens across their shared border — despite both being independent, sovereign states — does not fit that model. It calls for an alternative definition of sovereignty and raises a genuinely open research question: who decides what national sovereignty means?
The need for renewal
History alone cannot protect an institution. CNAS must remain active, useful, and intellectually respected — this requires renewal.
The Balen-led government has prioritized "innovation," introducing the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation. This is a timely initiative, but how is it to be achieved? Europe's Enlightenment laid an intellectual foundation — traceable to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle — from which science, the humanities, and the social sciences later grew, and the world continues to draw on that inheritance. If the 21st century is indeed Asia's age, then Asia's own intellectual traditions deserve the same serious exploration. Nepal, South Asia, and the wider region hold dozens of such traditions still to be studied — Shaivism, Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, and more.
With this in mind, CNAS has placed the Tatwagyaneshwar Temple and a Buddha statue on its premises, and continues to publish Nepal Adhyayan Journal in Nepali and other national languages.
A future agenda for CNAS
For CNAS, renewal should have practical meaning. First, it should build long-term research programs rather than depending mainly on short projects — Nepal needs continuing research on migration, national borders, national identity, heritage, social change, strategic affairs, tourism, language, religion, and regional relations.
Second, CNAS should strengthen opportunities for young scholars, many of whom complete higher degrees but have little access to institutions, archives, mentors, or funding. CNAS can become a national platform for research affiliation, training, supervision, collaboration, and publication.
Third, the Centre should connect research with public policy without losing academic independence. Research should inform government decisions, but scholars must remain free to present evidence honestly, even when their findings are inconvenient.
Fourth, CNAS should become more visible and accessible to the public. Its seminars, publications, findings, and archives should reach not only specialists but also students, journalists, teachers, policymakers, and general readers — research gains public value when people can understand and use it.
Fifth, CNAS should revive its original INAS mandate, combining research and teaching, so that both meet the Nepal government's stated objectives of "innovation" and the livelihood transformation Nepal's Gen-Z protesters have demanded. Joint PhD programs with international universities are one clear way to make this happen.
Finally, the Nepal government and Tribhuvan University need to decide, once and for all, whether CNAS and the university's three other research Centres are think tanks or consultancy offices. If they are think tanks, the government should fund their research directly — particularly in national security, foreign policy, and international relations. CNAS, under my leadership, has already decided not to accept external funding in these domains. Research here is not a report, an article, or a monograph to be commissioned; it is a matter of national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The Centre's own premises can support this vision. Its three-story building on the northwestern side of the Tribhuvan University campus houses offices, seminar halls, a meeting hall, a library, and a documentation Centre. The Tatwagyaneshwar Temple and Buddha statue within the premises represent Nepal's philosophical heritage and its traditions of knowledge, inquiry, and peace — and can also be understood as an effort to bring South Asian ideas of place, civilization, and philosophy into academic discussion. These spaces should help CNAS become not only an administrative institution but also a living Centre of dialogue for innovation and transformation.
Legacy must become responsibility
On its birthday, CNAS can rightly take pride in its long history. It has helped Nepal study itself, preserved valuable scholarship, built international relationships, and created space for multidisciplinary research. But the true value of a legacy lies in how it is carried forward.
CNAS must now turn its institutional memory into new research capacity — preserving the past, studying the present, and producing knowledge for the future. Nepal should not remain only a field where others collect information and apply theories developed elsewhere. It must also become a place from which original Jijñāsā — inquiry, in the Sanskrit sense of a genuine will to know — along with new questions, concepts, evidence, and explanations, enters wider academic debate.
Shrawan 1 should therefore be both a celebration and a commitment: a celebration of what CNAS has achieved, and a commitment to renew it as a strong, open, innovative, and nationally useful research institution.
(Dr. Karki is an Associate Professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University. )
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