From Hindu Kingdom to Secular Republic

Nepal's transformation from the world's only Hindu monarchy to a secular federal republic unfolded across a turbulent decade: a Maoist insurgency beginning in 1996 sought to abolish the monarchy and traditional Hindu state structure, a 2001 royal massacre killed King Birendra and much of the royal family under still-disputed circumstances, and mass 2006 pro-democracy protests forced King Gyanendra to relinquish absolute power, leading to a peace accord with the Maoists and the monarchy's formal abolition in 2008.

The 2015 constitution declares Nepal a secular state while explicitly defining secularism as the protection of the ancient religious and cultural practices existing since time immemorial, a formulation that Hindu nationalist groups have criticized as insufficiently protective of Hinduism's former special status and that religious minorities, including Christians and some Muslims, have criticized from the opposite direction for retaining restrictions such as a criminal law provision against religious conversion by inducement or allurement, which rights groups argue is applied in practice to restrict Christian evangelism specifically. Calls to restore Nepal as a Hindu state have persisted among royalist and Hindu nationalist movements, occasionally producing street protests since the republic's founding.