A little over a decade after Nepal declared itself a secular republic, religious identity threatens to emerge as a new axis of polarization in the politics of the former Hindu kingdom. A string of incidents that transpired over the past year have rudely awakened many in Nepal — including its complacent public sphere — of the inroads made by activist networks of militant Hindu nationalists, particularly in towns close to Nepal’s long border with India.

In August of last year, clips of a group publicly feasting on beef in Dharan, a city in eastern Nepal, gathered much national outrage, as eating bovine meat is largely taboo in the country and oxen slaughter remains illegal. This rabble-rousing tactic of activists, who were opposed to this law, triggered swift street mobilization by several Hindu groups in protest, who linked this incident to an already existing controversy in the city involving the setting up of a church opposite a Hindu temple. However, the potentially violent confrontation was foiled after the local administration temporarily restrained the protesters’ movement. Dharan remained on edge for weeks, with its diverse political and social landscape suddenly recast as a religious battlefield.

Malangawa, a town close to the Indian border and about 150 miles west of Dharan, was also forced to shut down several times in September last year to avoid violent standoff between its majority Hindus and minority Muslims. Preexisting differences between the two over the passage of Hindu ritual processions through the town’s Muslim neighborhoods allowed the Hindu Samrat Sena, a small Hindu nationalist outfit, to violently protest and ramp up “communal” tensions — a South Asianism for interreligious or interethnic strife — in the town.