Nepal, Nov. 12 -- Recently, a college senior asked me if she could fast for a single day to observe Chhath Mahaparva. The Nepal government provides a day's holiday for the five-day festival. It might have been a casual question that the senior was asking. But for me, it highlighted a troubling systemic reality. The state has compressed a deeply sacred, multi-day eco-spiritual tradition into a single token holiday. And in doing so, it has invited people to treat centuries of lived wisdom as a drive-through experience, risking erasing the culture's essence.

For seven years, I have argued for national recognition of Chhath as a complete, five-day spiritual and ecological commitment, moving from the Godhan Kutai ritual on Goverdhan Puja thro...