Protest gave people something more than slogans and broken streets it gave them identity.

Why else would thousands of young people gather, some even daring to raise their voices against power, brave enough to fight, and in some cases, lose their lives? For those between 16 and 24, protest isn’t only about politics; it’s about belonging. It’s patriotism taking shape in real time. When frustration has been simmering, when opportunities are scarce, a protest feels like a sudden doorway—an opening to fight for something larger than the self, to stand for the nation.

I’m reminded of something Javed Akhtar once said when asked about how hard he had worked to succeed. His reply was simple but profound: “Nothing in life comes for free. Even a beggar sells something. When a beggar asks for money and you give him a coin, he sells you a feeling—the feeling that you are good, that you are generous, that you are moral. For the next few minutes, you live with that borrowed feeling.”

In that sense, protest is never only for the country or the cause. People also protest for themselves. They go to borrow that feeling—that they matter, that they are part of change, that their voice is contributing to society. Protest becomes a search for identity as much as it is a struggle for justice.

You see a similar pattern in the diaspora. People who leave Nepal often discover a sharper sense of nationalism abroad. Surrounded by foreign languages, foreign customs, foreign ways of life, they slip into a quiet identity crisis. In that crisis, being Nepali suddenly becomes a source of pride and psychological anchor. Patriotism is, at its core, an answer to “Who am I?”

So perhaps all our fights—for justice, for change, for the nation carry a self-serving layer. Protest provides emotional fulfillment, a sense of moral satisfaction. Deep down, we are selfish beings. And yet, that selfishness is not entirely destructive. Because when we protest against corruption, against the system, we are really protesting against ourselves—the smaller parts that make up the whole.

The system is nothing more than the sum of its people. If the parts rot, the whole decays. If the parts heal, the whole transforms. Change begins not with the entire ship but with the replacement of each plank, each nail, each piece—slowly, carefully. And when the work is done, perhaps it will be the same ship by name, but in truth, something entirely new.

So let us not waste that little feeling we bought—the feeling of being part of something greater. Let us not forget those who gave their lives for that feeling: the belief that they loved their nation enough to trade their present for our better future.

In the end, protest gave us identity, but it also handed us responsibility—the responsibility to keep replacing the parts, until the ship we call our country truly sails toward the future it deserves.

Jay Nepal🇳🇵