The annual Mahesh Chandra Regmi Lecture was instituted by Social Science Baha to honour the seminal contributions of the late historian Mahesh Chandra Regmi to Nepali scholarship.

The Baha envisages the lecture series to be a platform for allowing scholars and researchers in the social sciences to present their ideas and seminal works to the Nepalese intelligentsia and society. In keeping with this vision, every year, the Baha invites a scholar who has made an important contribution to social sciences scholarship in Nepal or on Nepali society, to present her or his work in front of an audience of invitees and the public.

Harka Gurung delivered the inaugural Mahesh Chandra Regmi lecture in April 2003 at the opening of the Baha-organized conference “The Agenda of Transformation: Inclusion in Nepali Democracy”. Gurung’s lecture entitled Trident and Thunderbolt: Cultural Dynamics in Nepali Politics was given in the presence of the late Mahesh Chandra Regmi himself who was the chief guest on the occasion. Unfortunately for Nepali scholarship, that proved to be Regmi’s last public appearance.