The New York Times/ by Gardiner Harris
In a visit that has transfixed this impoverished country, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, told Nepal’s legislature on Sunday that its effort to write the nation’s Constitution was a sacred process.
"You are writing a treatise just like the rishis in the past wrote the Vedas and Upanishads,” Mr. Modi said, referring to Hindu sages and the religious scriptures they wrote.
The 50-minute speech, the first by a foreign leader before Nepal’s legislature, the Constituent Assembly, was clearly intended to urge Nepal’s leaders to finish the country’s Constitution, delayed for years.
Perhaps just as important, Mr. Modi avoided suggesting how Nepal’s legislators should resolve their remaining controversies over how to delineate states, whether to empower a president or prime minister, and whether Hinduism should be declared the state religion.
Nepal, like India, is majority Hindu........[read
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