National Library Day

Every year on Bhadra 15, Nepal observes National Library Day, known in Nepali as राष्ट्रिय पुस्तकालय दिवस or Rastriya Pustakalaya Diwas. It is a quiet day compared with the festivals around it, with no processions and no feasting, but it commemorates something genuinely remarkable: the moment more than two centuries ago when the Nepali state first decided in writing that books were worth protecting.

The date is not symbolic. On Bhadra 15, 1869 BS, during the reign of King Girvan Yuddha Bikram Shah, a royal decree bearing the red seal, a lal mohar, established a fund and office called the Pustak Chitai Tahabil. It set out rules for how books were to be looked after, restricted who could take them away, and appointed a named individual to be responsible for them. That document is regarded as the founding of the first library in Nepal, and the first time libraries received formal legal recognition in the country.

The modern observance is much younger. Nepal's Ministry of Education began marking Bhadra 15 as National Library Day in 2065 BS (2008). So the day joins a 214-year-old decree to a two-decade-old commemoration, and uses both to ask an uncomfortable question: a country that was protecting its books by royal order in 1812 now has one of the lowest rates of public library access in the world. This page covers the date, the decree, Nepal's great libraries, how the day is observed, and where things actually stand.

Quick Facts

When Is National Library Day Celebrated?

National Library Day falls on Bhadra 15 every year. Like Asar 15, this is a fixed solar date in the Nepali calendar, not a lunar one, so it does not move around the way Dashain, Teej, or Janai Purnima do. It lands on the same Nepali date every year and on nearly the same English date.

In 2026, which is 2083 BS, National Library Day falls on Monday, 31 August 2026, and it is the 19th National Library Day since the observance began in 2065 BS.

To work out the edition number in any year, subtract 2065 from the Bikram Sambat year and add one. 2083 minus 2065 is 18, plus one is the 19th.

Is it a public holiday? No. National Library Day is a working day. Offices, banks, and schools stay open, and the day is marked with programmes rather than closures. Schools and libraries usually run their events during working hours, which is the point, since the audience is students and readers.

The Story Behind Bhadra 15: Nepal's First Library

This is the part of the day almost nobody knows, and it deserves telling properly.

Nepal in 1869 BS

The year 1869 in the Bikram Sambat calendar is 1812 in the Gregorian calendar. Nepal was a young unified kingdom, only about forty years past the campaigns of Prithvi Narayan Shah. Girvan Yuddha Bikram Shah sat on the throne, having become king as an infant, with the country actually run by regents and by the powerful Bhimsen Thapa. The Anglo-Nepalese War was still a couple of years away.

There was no printing press in Nepal. Every book in the country was a manuscript, written by hand, most often on paper or palm leaf, most often in Sanskrit or Newari, and most often on religious, philosophical, astrological, medical or legal subjects. Making one took months. Losing one could mean losing a text forever. Books were not commodities. They were irreplaceable objects.

The decree

On Bhadra 15, 1869 BS, a lal mohar, a decree issued under the king's red seal and carrying the force of law, was issued concerning the Pustak Chitai Tahabil.

The name explains the function. Pustak is a book. Chitai carries the sense of oversight, care or supervision. Tahabil means a fund or treasury, and a tahabildar is the person who keeps it. So the Pustak Chitai Tahabil is, in plain terms, the office and fund for the keeping of books. The state was treating its book collection the way it treated its money: as an asset that needed a named custodian, a set of rules and a budget.

The decree is reported to have covered the practical business of preservation, including how books were to be maintained and restrictions on their being taken away or distributed without authorisation. In other words, it was doing exactly what a library does: keeping a collection intact, and controlling circulation so that it stays intact.

Nepal's first librarian

The decree also named the person responsible. Pandit Kedarnath Jha was appointed as the tahabildar, the keeper of the book fund, at an annual salary of 125 rupees. He is therefore recognised as the first librarian in Nepal's history, holding a salaried, official, state-defined post whose job was to look after books.

That detail is what makes the date worth commemorating. Plenty of societies have collected books. What happened on Bhadra 15, 1869 BS was that Nepal created a paid position, a rule set and a budget line for the job. It moved book-keeping from private habit to public institution. That is the birth of a library system, and it is why the modern observance points to this date rather than to the founding of any particular building.

How National Library Day Became an Official Observance

The decree sat in history for a long time before anyone built a national day around it.

Nepal's Ministry of Education began observing Bhadra 15 as National Library Day in 2065 BS (2008), anchoring it to the anniversary of the 1869 BS decree. That places the observance firmly in the post-2006 period, when Nepal was rewriting a great deal about how it thought of public institutions and access to knowledge.

Each year the day is given a theme or slogan, generally circling the same ideas: reading access, libraries as centres of lifelong learning, and library development in every local unit. The 2082 BS observance, the 18th, ran under the theme of libraries for continuous education, and was marked by the inauguration of dozens of new libraries around the country on the day itself. Inaugurating libraries on Library Day has become the standard way the state marks the occasion.

It is worth noting what the Constitution of Nepal says on this, because it is the legal backbone of the day. The constitution includes among the state's policies the establishment and promotion of community information centres and libraries for the development of citizens. National Library Day is, in part, an annual reminder of that commitment.

Nepal's Great Libraries

If you want to understand what this day is protecting, it helps to know what is actually in the country.

Nepal National Library, Harihar Bhawan, Pulchowk

Nepal's national library was established in Poush 2013 BS (January 1957). Its founding collection was the personal library of Rajguru Hem Raj Pandey, the royal preceptor, whose collection was purchased for the nation in 1956. That collection was merged with the Central Secretariat Library at Singha Durbar, giving the new institution an initial holding of a little over thirty-four thousand books and periodicals.

In 1961 it moved to Harihar Bhawan in Pulchowk, Lalitpur, a former Rana palace, where it remains. In its early years it did important publishing work, putting ancient handwritten texts into print for the first time. As the country's national library, it holds the deposit collection and is the institution the day most directly points to.

Kaiser Library, Kaiser Mahal, Kathmandu

Perhaps the most beautiful reading room in Nepal. The collection began in 1907 when Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher assembled a library for his son Kaiser Shumsher Rana, who spent his life expanding it into a personal collection of extraordinary range: history, art, law, astrology, hunting, gardening, philosophy, religion and literature.

After Kaiser died in 1965, his wife donated around twenty-five thousand volumes to the government, and the library was opened to the public on 11 September 1969. It now holds more than fifty thousand volumes. It sits inside Kaiser Mahal next to the Garden of Dreams, and the room itself, with its wooden shelves, portraits and old-world reading tables, is one of the few places in Kathmandu where the nineteenth century is still standing.

Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, Patan Dhoka

This one started with a schoolboy. In the mid-1940s, a Kathmandu student named Kamal Mani Dixit began buying Nepali publications with money saved from his lunch allowance. That habit turned into the most important archive of the Nepali language in existence.

The library was established in 1955 and received an endowment in 1956 from Rani Jagadamba Kumari Devi, and it is named after her husband, the late General Madan Shumsher. Today, from its home at Patan Dhoka, it functions as the principal archive of books, periodicals, and printed ephemera in Nepali, and it administers the Madan Puraskar, the most prestigious literary prize in the language, along with the Jagadamba Shree Puraskar.

If Nepal has a memory of its own printed language, it is kept here.

The National Archives, Kathmandu

Nepal's National Archives holds one of the world's most important collections of South Asian manuscripts. Between 1970 and 2001, the Nepal German Manuscript Preservation Project microfilmed more than 180,000 manuscripts from Nepal, amounting to roughly five million pages, including a Skanda Purana manuscript dated to about 810 CE. Scholars worldwide still work from that material. It is the deepest evidence that Nepal's culture of book preservation, the thing the 1869 BS decree formalised, was real and effective long before it was written into law.

University and community libraries

The Tribhuvan University Central Library at Kirtipur is the largest academic library in the country. Beyond that sit roughly a thousand public and community libraries spread across Nepal, most of them run by the communities they serve rather than by the state. In many towns and villages, that small community library is the only place a student can sit and read something that is not a textbook.

How National Library Day Is Observed in Nepal

Library inaugurations. The state's signature move on the day is opening new libraries, with dozens sometimes inaugurated across the country on a single Bhadra 15.

An annual theme. A slogan is announced each year, generally built around reading access and libraries as centres of continuous education, and used across the day's programmes.

Ministry and library association programmes. The Ministry of Education, Nepal National Library, the Nepal Library Association and community library networks hold seminars and discussion programmes on library development, funding and policy.

Honours for librarians and donors. Long-serving librarians, contributing writers and people who have donated collections are recognised.

Book donation drives. Schools, colleges, offices and clubs collect books for community and school libraries, which is the most common way ordinary people take part.

Reading and writing competitions. Schools and colleges run essay contests, book review competitions, reading challenges, storytelling sessions and quiz programmes.

Open days. Libraries run tours, open normally closed sections, hold exhibitions of rare holdings, and register new members without charge.

National Library Day Wishes and Messages

• राष्ट्रिय पुस्तकालय दिवसको हार्दिक शुभकामना
• पुस्तकालय दिवसको शुभकामना, पुस्तक नै ज्ञानको सच्चा साथी हो
• भाद्र १५, राष्ट्रिय पुस्तकालय दिवसको शुभकामना, पढौं, पढाऔं
• Happy National Library Day. A country is only as open as its shelves.
• On National Library Day, remember that Nepal has been protecting its books since 1869 BS.
• पुस्तकालय दिवसको अवसरमा एउटा पुस्तक दान गरौं

Posters and greetings for National Library Day can be made quickly with the Digital Patro post maker, which has Nepali templates for national observances, useful for schools, colleges, and libraries running programmes on the day.

Interesting Facts About National Library Day and Nepal's Libraries

• The date commemorates a royal decree issued on Bhadra 15, 1869 BS, which is 1812 in the Gregorian calendar.
• Nepal's first librarian, Pandit Kedarnath Jha, was paid 125 rupees a year for the post.
• The office was called the Pustak Chitai Tahabil, meaning roughly the fund for the keeping of books, treating the book collection like a state treasury.
• Nepal had no printing press at the time, so every book that decree protected was handwritten.
• The modern observance is only about two decades old, beginning in 2065 BS (2008).
• Nepal National Library began with the purchased personal collection of Rajguru Hem Raj Pandey and about 34,000 items.
• Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya grew out of a schoolboy buying books with his saved lunch money in the 1940s.
• Kaiser Library was a private Rana collection that opened to the public in September 1969 and now holds more than 50,000 volumes.
• More than 180,000 manuscripts from Nepal have been microfilmed for preservation, one of the world's great manuscript hoards.
• Nepal still has no dedicated library law, only a policy dating from 2007.
• Bhadra 15 is a fixed date, so National Library Day never moves, unlike most Nepali festivals.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is National Library Day in Nepal?

→ National Library Day, or Rastriya Pustakalaya Diwas, is Nepal's official observance dedicated to libraries, reading, and the preservation of books. It is held on Bhadra 15 each year and commemorates the royal decree of Bhadra 15, 1869 BS that created Nepal's first library. The day is marked with library inaugurations, book donation drives, reading competitions, and programmes on library development.

When is National Library Day celebrated in Nepal?

→ It is celebrated on Bhadra 15 every year, which is almost always 31 August in the Gregorian calendar. In 2026, which is 2083 BS, it falls on Monday, 31 August 2026. Because Bhadra 15 is a fixed solar date in the Nepali calendar rather than a lunar one, the day does not shift around the way most Nepali festivals do.

Why is National Library Day on Bhadra 15?

→ Because on Bhadra 15, 1869 BS, during the reign of King Girvan Yuddha Bikram Shah, a royal decree under the red seal established the Pustak Chitai Tahabil, a fund and office for the keeping of books. It set rules for preserving books, restricted their unauthorised removal, and appointed a salaried keeper. That decree is regarded as the founding of the first library in Nepal and the first legal recognition of libraries in the country.

What was the Pustak Chitai Tahabil?

→ The name means roughly the fund for the oversight of books. Pustak is book, chitai carries the sense of care or supervision, and tahabil means a fund or treasury. It was the office and budget the Nepali state created to look after its book collection, complete with rules and a named custodian. In practical terms, it was Nepal's first library administration.

Who was Nepal's first librarian?

→ Pandit Kedarnath Jha, appointed as tahabildar, the keeper of the book fund, under the 1869 BS decree, at an annual salary of 125 rupees. He is recognised as the first person in Nepal to hold an official, salaried post whose responsibility was the care of books.

Since when has Nepal observed National Library Day?

→ Nepal's Ministry of Education began observing Bhadra 15 as National Library Day in 2065 BS, which is 2008. The event it commemorates is far older, dating to 1869 BS, but the national observance itself is roughly two decades old. In 2083 BS the country marks the 19th National Library Day.

Which National Library Day is 2083 BS?

→ The 19th. To calculate the edition for any year, subtract 2065 from the Bikram Sambat year and add one, since the first observance was in 2065 BS.

Is National Library Day a public holiday?

→ No. It is a working day and an official observance rather than a holiday. Government offices, banks, and schools remain open, and programmes are held during working hours, which suits the day since the intended audience is students, readers, and library workers.

Where is Nepal's national library?

→ Nepal National Library is at Harihar Bhawan in Pulchowk, Lalitpur, in a former Rana palace. It was established in Poush 2013 BS (January 1957), built around the purchased personal collection of Rajguru Hem Raj Pandey, and moved to Harihar Bhawan in 1961.

What is Kaiser Library?

→ Kaiser Library is a public library housed in Kaiser Mahal in Kathmandu, beside the Garden of Dreams. The collection began in 1907 as a private library assembled for Kaiser Shumsher Rana, who expanded it enormously over his lifetime. After his death, part of the collection was donated to the government and the library opened to the public on 11 September 1969. It now holds more than fifty thousand volumes across history, art, law, philosophy, religion and literature.

What is Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya?

→ It is the principal archive of the Nepali language, located at Patan Dhoka in Lalitpur. It grew out of a collection begun in the mid 1940s by a schoolboy, Kamal Mani Dixit, who bought Nepali publications with saved lunch money. It was established in 1955 and endowed by Rani Jagadamba Kumari Devi, and it is named after her husband, General Madan Shumsher. It also administers the Madan Puraskar, the most prestigious literary prize in Nepali.

How many libraries does Nepal have?

→ There are roughly a thousand public and community libraries across the country, most of them run by the communities they serve rather than by the government, alongside academic libraries and school libraries of varying quality. Even so, Nepal has one of the lowest rates of public library access per head of population in the world, which is one of the main issues National Library Day is meant to raise.

Does Nepal have a library law?

→ Not a dedicated one. Nepal has a Library and Information Policy dating from 2007, and the Constitution of Nepal includes the establishment and promotion of community information centres and libraries among the state's policies. But there is no separate library act giving libraries a permanent statutory footing, standard funding, and enforceable standards, and library advocates have long argued for one.

How is National Library Day celebrated?

→ The state usually marks it by inaugurating new libraries, sometimes dozens on the same day, and by announcing an annual theme focused on reading access and lifelong learning. The Ministry of Education, Nepal National Library, library associations and community libraries hold seminars, honour long-serving librarians, and run open days. Schools and colleges run essay contests, book reviews, reading challenges and book donation drives, which is how most students take part.

What can an ordinary person do on National Library Day?

→ Donate finished books to a school or community library, especially books in Nepali. Take out a library membership, since member numbers are what libraries use to argue for funding. Take a child to a library and get them a card. Volunteer a few hours for shelving or cataloguing. Sponsor a shelf or a periodical subscription if you run a business. And ask your ward what its budget line for libraries is.