In Nepal and across South Asia, we talk endlessly about the extremes\u2014the powerful and the powerless, the elders and the youth, the rich and the poor, the masculine and the feminine. But in this noise, a quiet truth goes unnoticed: the middle is the most marginalized place to be.<\/p>\n
I was reminded of this during a short taxi ride in Kathmandu. The middle-aged driver said something profoundly simple: <\/p>\n
\u201cWe feared the older generation while growing up. Now we fear our children. We are stuck in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n
His words capture a reality we rarely acknowledge.<\/p>\n
-The Middle Generation: A Bridge Without a Home<\/strong><\/p>\n The middle generation in Nepal is squeezed between reverence for elders and the blunt confidence of Gen Z. They grew up in fear, hierarchy, and unquestioned obedience\u2014but now they must parent children who demand answers they themselves were never allowed to ask.<\/p>\n They are the bridge connecting two worlds, yet bridges are stepped on, not celebrated.<\/p>\n -The Middle Class: Invisible but Holding the Country Together<\/p>\n We hear the voices of the rich because they have power, <\/p>\n and the voices of the poor because they rightly demand justice.<\/p>\n But the middle class, which fuels Nepal\u2019s economy, rarely receives attention:<\/p>\n Too \u201cwell-off\u201d to get support<\/p>\n Too strained to feel secure<\/p>\n Too busy surviving to protest<\/p>\n Too essential to be noticed<\/p>\n They pay the taxes, carry the burdens, and stabilize the system\u2014yet their struggles remain invisible.<\/p>\n -Middle Genders: Sacred in Tradition, Marginalized in Modernity<\/p>\n Nepal is praised globally for recognizing \u201cthird gender\u201d identities. But in our own cultural and spiritual history, these identities are not third\u2014they are middle: a blend, a balance, a fluidity that transcends duality.<\/p>\n From tantric traditions to ritual roles, middle-gender people have long been guardians of wisdom, mediators of energies, and cultural custodians.<\/p>\n But today:<\/strong><\/p>\n They are too feminine for men,<\/p>\n too masculine for women,<\/p>\n and too complex for bureaucratic categories.<\/p>\n Spiritual traditions honoured them.<\/p>\n Modern society sidelines them.<\/p>\n -Buddhism Teaches the Middle Path. Society Punishes It.<\/p>\n The irony is painful.<\/strong><\/p>\n At the heart of Buddhism\u2014Nepal\u2019s own heritage\u2014is the Middle Path:<\/p>\n a rejection of extremes, a way of balance, clarity, and liberation.<\/p>\n The Buddha himself taught that wisdom is not found in polarities but in the space between them.<\/p>\n And look at how enlightened beings are traditionally depicted:<\/p>\n The Buddha: serene, soft-featured, no facial hair<\/strong><\/p>\n Mahavira:<\/strong> Mahavira\u2019s ascetic practice transcended gender-based identity. For twelve years he lived in complete nudity, dissolving bodily and sensory distinctions and moving beyond the social expectations of \u2018male\u2019 or \u2018female\u2019\u2014an approach that, in modern language, resembles an androgynous orientation.<\/p>\n Hindu saints and deities:<\/strong> often fluid in gender, embodying both masculine and feminine energies<\/p>\n Enlightenment in Eastern philosophy is a middle-gender phenomenon\u2014the merging of firmness and compassion, strength and softness, logic and intuition.<\/p>\n Yet people who embody similar traits today face mockery, discrimination, and exclusion.<\/p>\n We worship the middle in temples but reject it in real life.<\/p>\n -The Middle Is Not Weak. It Is the Axis.<\/p>\n Across generations, classes, genders, and philosophies, the middle is not emptiness\u2014it is the axis on which society turns.<\/p>\n The middle carries:<\/strong><\/p>\n the responsibility of one generation,<\/p>\n the economic weight of the nation,<\/p>\n the cultural and spiritual fluidity that holds diversity together,<\/p>\n But it is also the part we ignore the most.<\/p>\n Because the middle is complex.<\/p>\n The middle disrupts binaries.<\/p>\n The middle refuses to pick a side.<\/p>\n And society, built on extremes, fears what it cannot categorize.<\/p>\n -It\u2019s Time to Bring the Middle Back to the Center<\/p>\n Nepal\u2019s political discourse is increasingly polarized.<\/p>\n Our social debates are framed as either\/or.<\/p>\n Our gender policies are stuck between borrowed Western binaries and forgotten indigenous wisdom.<\/p>\n To move forward, we must:<\/p>\n respect the middle generation as cultural stabilizers,<\/p>\n protect the middle class as the economic engine,<\/p>\n honor middle genders as part of Nepal\u2019s spiritual and cultural heritage,<\/p>\n The middle is not the margin.<\/p>\n We simply treat it as one.<\/p>\n In truth, the middle is where balance begins, where dialogue becomes possible, and where real transformation happens\u2014just as the Buddha taught 2,600 years ago.<\/p>\n Nepal will be stronger not when extremes shout louder,<\/p>\n but when the middle finally steps into the light. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Nepal and across South Asia, we talk endlessly about the extremes\u2014the powerful and the powerless, the elders and the youth, the rich and the poor, the masculine and the feminine. But in this noise, a quiet truth goes unnoticed: the middle is the most marginalized place to be.
\nI was reminded of this during a short taxi ride in Kathmandu. The middle-aged driver said something profoundly simple:
\n\u201cWe feared the older generation while growing up. Now we fear our children. We are stuck in the middle.\u201d
\nHis words capture a reality …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":14231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,8,621,490,3,2065],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue","category-human-rights","category-news","category-slider","category-society","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14232,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14230\/revisions\/14232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}