Kathmandu, June 4: President Ramchandra Paudel has called for standing firmly against caste-based untouchability and discrimination. The President stated this in his message of best wishes on the occasion of the National Day on the Abolition of Caste Discrimination and Untouchability today.
On this occasion, the President has wished happiness, peace, and prosperity to all Nepali sisters and brothers residing in the country and abroad, stating that caste-based discrimination is a crime against social, moral, and human dignity.
In the message, he emphasized the need to strengthen national unity with equality by fostering mutual understanding, harmony, and cooperation among all castes and communities to promote social awakening and the development of equality, while firmly standing against caste discrimination and division to make the democratic state system meaningful.
The Head of the State has called on every individual, family, society, government bodies at all three levels, political parties, national and international non-governmental organizations, civil society, and journalists to be more sensitive against untouchability and racial discrimination.
Reminding of the constitutional provisions ensuring the building of society based on social equality and justice, he has stated that may the National Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and Untouchability inspire the relevant bodies to create a significant basis for the gradual end of all forms of discrimination and oppression based on economic, social, political, cultural, and ethnic grounds.
The President expressed that positive changes can be brought about in thinking, working style, customs, and social practices, as well as in behavior, by enhancing mutual unity, reconciliation, and harmony, to reduce the existing racial discrimination and untouchability in social behavior.
President Paudel has expressed his best wishes in the message for everyone to be inspired to build a cultured and equality-based prosperous nation free from racial discrimination and untouchability on the occasion of the National Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and Untouchability.
The National Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and Untouchability is marked on the 21st of the Nepali month of Jeth every year to commemorate the day when the government declared the country a ‘caste discrimination-free nation’ on Jeth 21, 2063 BS (June 4, 2006).
