The early 1990s, when Bikas Rauniar earned his title of ace photojournalist, was when Nepal truly entered the modern era. The People’s Movement of 1990 delivered a constitution that guaranteed fundamental freedoms, which led to the proliferation of media. Now you could actually be an editor, a reporter and a photojournalist.

In these photographs, you see citizens learning the ropes of an infant democracy—of parliamentary practice, print, radio and television media, environmentalism and street protests. It was the resilience born of those first few years of democracy that gave Nepal the momentum to survive the “conflict decade” and the nearly a decade of “transition” since.

Bikas Rauniar’s images remind us of an era that is all but forgotten in our day-to-day discourse, because it is not old enough to be history, and not new enough to be important. Yet it is this period that explains the advances we have made and the weaknesses that our society suffers from today.

To begin with, you see that the national political players who started out with the new democracy are the ones who are still leading us a quarter-century later.

Text by Kanak Mani Dixit