After anti-corruption Gen Z protests and a deadly uprising forced the prime minister and government to resign, Nepal searches for a new politics that can jettison its failed establishment.

Nepalis don’t often pay attention to the politics of their Southasian neighbours beyond India. But when Sri Lankans rose up in 2022 to boot out the Rajapaksa regime¹, they took notice. Then came Bangladesh and its July Revolution last year, with Sheikh Hasina² and the entire political system around her in the public’s sights. Again, Nepal took note. In numerous conversations in Kathmandu³, on both occasions, I heard the same refrain: our turn will come.

So here it is now. Young people, under the banner of “Gen Z protests”, took to the streets on 8 September – sick of a corrupt political system and political class, sick of seeing the same discredited old men taking turns to lead and loot the country, sick of seeing no future path but to leave for work abroad, which thousands do every single day. The peaceful protests suddenly veered into violence, and after police opened fire the death toll climbed to 19, with hospitals packed full of the injured. It was the single deadliest day of protest that Nepal has ever seen.

On the morning of 9 September, sorrow and rage brought thousands out, defying curfews. Throughout the country, anything connected to the government and the political establishment was suddenly fair game. Party offices and politicians’ homes went up in smoke. By afternoon, heavy columns of soot rose from the bowl of the Kathmandu Valley.⁴ The country’s main airport was closed, with flights diverted away. At new ministerial quarters in the south of the capital, helicopters landed to ferry residents away to safety. Then, more gunfire, more sirens, explosions, even thicker plumes of smoke.

Ministers began resigning, following in the wake of the home minister, who had quit the previous night. Opposition parliamentarians resigned en masse, with calls growing to dissolve the government and call for fresh elections. Before 3 pm the prime minister, K P Sharma Oli – in his third stint in power, and as stubborn and self-serving as they come – also announced that he was stepping down.

As the day proceeded, things spiralled completely out of control. This was no longer the Gen Z protestors of the previous day. The mob had taken over. Videos circulated of political leaders being thrashed, their homes being stoned and set alight. The prime minister’s house was burning, the president’s residence, the Supreme Court, the parliament, supermarkets, police stations, and much more. And, of course, more deaths to count. The chief of the army made an appearance to call for restraint and calm, but this did little to stop the looting and violence. Finally, well into the night, came an announcement that the army was being deployed to restore order.

Today Nepal woke up to deep uncertainty. The feeling is the government had to answer for the 19 dead, that Oli and the old guard had to go. But the scale of the arson, the bloodletting, the mob running free – past the red haze of anger, few can justify all of that. Nobody knows who is now in charge. Nobody can say what happens next.

Patterns from the past

The last two days’ events, with their speed and scale, almost defy sense. But there are patterns from the past that will make themselves felt as Nepalis turn to the question of what next.

First: this has been a long time coming, and the entrenched system will take some serious undoing. The anger evident in the reactions to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh’s uprisings had been building up for years. Nepal’s exit from its civil war, ended almost two decades ago, had been full of hope. The establishment parties – foremost among them the Nepali Congress and Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), the same parties that led the government that has just come down – promised a new democratic dawn after they finally turned against the monarchy. The Maoists⁵, having laid down arms and agreed to stand for democratic election, had sold dreams of a more just society to millions of Nepalis who had never gotten a fair deal. Then, by and large, hopes were shattered, the promises broken.

The Maoists won the first post-war vote, a sign of how hungry Nepal’s people were for change. But they failed to make any real impact and soon became just another establishment party. Their failure is best symbolised by how their leader – Chairman Prachanda⁶ himself – soon became known more for his personal wealth than his revolutionary credentials. A new draft constitution, shockingly progressive in Nepal’s historical context, was stalled and stalled until it was forced through after much watering down.⁷ Subsequent elections have seen the vote fractured largely between the three establishment parties, with backroom deals and public backstabbings delivering a revolving carousel of the same discredited leaders coming and going from power.

Nepal has made progress in the years since the war, but this has been slow and tortuous, and more often won despite the government than because of it. Public services remain dismal, even as tax burdens are high. For most Nepalis, the main sources of hope and uplift are the remittances from their relatives toiling abroad, many of them under terrible conditions.⁸ Meanwhile those in the political elite – dominated, as it has long been, by dominant-caste men from the country’s Pahad region⁹ – have been doing just fine, and have carefully cultivated their preferred crony capitalists. A long series of corruption scandals in recent years implicating politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen from across the establishment spectrum has only reinforced the public’s dismal view of the system.

The cycle of failed revolutions

Second: Nepalis have some idea how to wage a popular revolution, but they have never really figured out how to make one stick. The country’s first democratic upsurge, in the 1950s, deposed the hereditary Rana prime ministers¹⁰ and won the people a free vote. But the monarchy, freed from over a century of Rana control, soon turned on the fledgling democratic parties, and the Shah dynasty¹¹ reasserted its power. After decades of Panchayat rule¹² – a kind of managed, sham democracy under the monarchy – Nepalis rose up again in 1990. That revolution brought the democratic parties back to power, albeit with the king as constitutional monarch, before it too foundered. Misrule and an escalating Maoist insurgency opened the door to a royal coup d’état in 2005.¹³ Then came the end of the war, in 2008; the end of the monarchy; and all the hopes betrayed.

This moment is Nepal’s latest attempt at correction. It may not go down as a revolution – certainly nobody is asking to overturn the system of government – but what the people want is a seismic change in the rules of power. Unfortunately the past is a powerful foe, and Nepal’s old ways have too often reincarnated with new faces. The public mood now is to turn towards a seeming new guard: upstart figures like Rabi Lamichhane, a television anchor turned politician, or Balen Shah, a rapper turned Kathmandu’s mayor. The former founded a new party¹⁴ in mid-2022, and it won a stunning 10 percent of the vote in a national election just months later. The latter came out of nowhere that same year to upset two establishment candidates as he swept the capital’s municipal election. But both men’s records leave more than a little room for concern, even if many Nepalis might ignore this in a search for saviours.

Lamichhane is dogged by numerous controversies, including charges of corruption that had him behind bars until he was let out amid the uprising. These charges are politically motivated, a way for the old establishment to beat down a challenger – but it is also not clear if they are wholly unsubstantiated, and Lamichhane has work to do to prove he is clean. What’s more, Lamichhane showed no compunction in joining hands with the old order during a short-lived stint in government after the 2022 election. Shah’s tenure as mayor has been marred by administrative dysfunction, and his main accomplishment remains the cult of personality he has built online. If the old guard is truly to go, can Nepalis be sure such a new guard will be better?

A Southasian Spring?

Lamichhane and Shah’s electoral results, delivering black eyes to the old parties, were harbingers of the anti-establishment anger that has now boiled over. If Nepal goes to the polls again anytime soon, the smart money will be on the vote swinging hard against the old parties. But that alone cannot guarantee new leaders with the wherewithal to resist the temptations that undid those before them, or a government that will deliver real change. When it comes to systemic fixes, to really reinventing the country’s politics, Nepal ventures onto uncharted ground.

With Nepal’s uprising to add to those in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, it is tempting to see a Southasian Spring, akin to the Arab Spring of the early 2010s. The elements are there: rotten governments, fed-up people, one uprising linking to the next. But also: death, devastation, and no sure path to a better place. It is sobering to remember how the Arab Spring ended up, with democracy snuffed out again by autocracy. In Bangladesh the mobs had their way too after the Hasina government’s necessary fall, and an interim government has struggled to clean up the system as the country approaches a necessary new election. The next government there could well bring certain old powers back, and with them old ways. In Sri Lanka, a new government shorn of the old establishment is breaking its earlier promises one by one. There has not been any blazing new dawn. And now Nepal, from its present abyss, dreams of a new politics that actually works for the people. Let it not have to see more blood in its striving.

For now there is all the horror to process from these days, bodies still to cremate, some semblance of order to restore. Nothing that comes next will be easy.

(Roman Gautam – republished from Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières)

Footnotes

1. The Rajapaksa family dominated Sri Lankan politics for decades. Mahinda Rajapaksa served as president from 2005-2015, and his brother Gotabaya was president from 2019-2022 when mass protests forced his resignation ↩︎
2. Sheikh Hasina Wajed served as Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1996-2001 and 2009-2024. She fled the country in August 2024 following massive student-led protests ↩︎
3. Nepal’s capital and largest city ↩︎
4. The Kathmandu Valley is a bowl-shaped valley in the hills of central Nepal where the capital is located ↩︎
5. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), formerly the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), fought a decade-long insurgency (1996-2006) against the government before joining the political mainstream ↩︎
6. Pushpa Kamal Dahal, known by his nom de guerre “Prachanda” meaning “the fierce one”, led the Maoist insurgency and has served as Prime Minister multiple times since 2008 ↩︎
7. Nepal’s 2015 constitution established the country as a federal democratic republic, ending centuries of Hindu monarchy ↩︎
8. Nepal receives over $10 billion (£7.9 billion) annually in remittances, about 25% of its GDP, mainly from workers in Gulf countries, Malaysia, and India ↩︎
9. The Pahad (hill) region is the central mountainous area of Nepal, traditionally dominated by Bahun (Brahmin) and Chhetri castes ↩︎
10. The Rana dynasty ruled Nepal as hereditary prime ministers from 1846-1951, reducing the Shah kings to figureheads whilst maintaining absolute power ↩︎
11. he Shah dynasty ruled Nepal as kings from 1768-2008 ↩︎
12. The Panchayat system (1960-1990) was a partyless political system established by King Mahendra that banned political parties and concentrated power in the monarchy ↩︎
13. King Gyanendra assumed direct rule in February 2005, dismissing the government and suspending civil liberties ↩︎
14. Rastriya Swatantra Party (National Independent Party) ↩︎