Nepali Christians Anxious as New Government Forms After March Elections

Following Nepal's general election on March 5, 2026, the country's small Christian minority found itself watching the political transition with a mixture of cautious hope and genuine anxiety. The election, which selected 275 members of Nepal's House of Representatives under a mixed electoral system, produced an unexpected result: the Rashtriya Swatantra Party won 125 of 165 seats decided under first-past-the-post voting, putting it in a strong position to form Nepal's next government.

AI Generated Image

For Nepal's Christian community, which numbers in the low millions in a country that remains overwhelmingly Hindu by both identity and cultural influence, election outcomes carry particular weight because of the country's anti-conversion legal framework. Nepal's constitution, adopted in 2015 after the country transitioned to secular status, simultaneously guarantees religious freedom while explicitly prohibiting anyone from converting another person from one religion to another, or engaging in conduct that might "jeopardize" another's religion. Violations carry criminal penalties of up to five years imprisonment and significant fines, with foreign nationals convicted under the law facing deportation. In practice, this legal structure has been used to prosecute Christians accused of proselytizing, including pastors and, in at least one widely reported case, a group of foreign tourists who had been assisting with construction work on a local church and were accused of using the project as cover for religious conversion.

Reactions to the March election results within Nepal's Christian community were notably mixed, reflecting genuine uncertainty about what the incoming government's approach to religious minorities will look like. One pastor, identified in reporting only by his role, expressed cautious optimism, noting that the results seemed to reflect a decline in the influence of pro-Hindu nationalist parties that have historically pushed for stricter religious regulation. However, another Christian community member, speaking on condition of anonymity, voiced concern that the new administration could ultimately prove less favorable to religious minorities than anticipated, illustrating how uncertain the path forward remains even among those directly affected.

This anxiety is rooted in a longer history of tension between Nepal's Christian minority and segments of the country's political establishment. Hindu nationalist parties, including the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, have periodically pushed for Nepal to formally re-establish itself as a Hindu state, reversing its 2008 transition to secularism — a shift that Christian community leaders and religious freedom advocates warn would likely be accompanied by intensified legal and social pressure on non-Hindu minorities. Even under the current secular constitutional framework, Christians in Nepal report facing intimidation, targeted harassment under anti-conversion enforcement, and periodic violence from extremist elements within the broader society, despite Nepal's Christian population having grown substantially over recent decades according to most community estimates, even as official census figures are widely believed to understate the community's actual size.

For SARFO, Nepal represents a distinctive case within South Asia's broader religious freedom landscape: a country whose constitutional secularism formally protects religious freedom, yet whose specific legal prohibitions on conversion function in practice as a mechanism that primarily constrains one community's ability to practice and share its faith openly. As Nepal's new government takes shape in the wake of this election, how it approaches enforcement of the anti-conversion law, and whether it faces renewed pressure to formally reestablish Hindu statehood, will be a significant indicator of the country's religious freedom trajectory in the period ahead.

Source: International Christian Concern — Read the full report