Nepal, April 8 -- Nepal is a country shaped by its imbalances. For every rupee we earn from exports, we spend nearly eight on imports. Fuel, life-saving medicines, electronics and cement-the essentials of modern life come from beyond our borders. And then there is our most poignant export: Our people. We trade our youth for remittances that keep the economy floating, relying on the earnings of those who had to leave because opportunities were scarce.

There is another import we rarely acknowledge, even though it deeply matters to democracy. We are importing our own story.

The silence of the past

To understand this, we need to look at how we have handled moments of national crisis. In June 2001, after the royal massacre, the country was ...