By Serge Jordan
Barely two weeks after Indonesia broke out in mass protests, it is now Nepal’s turn to face the wrath of its youth. On Monday, September 9, Kathmandu and other major cities —including Pokhara, Butwal, Bharatpur, Itahari, Biratnagar, Janakpur, Hetauda, and Nepalgunj— were swept by a wave of demonstrations, called by groups identifying themselves as “Gen-Z”, after the KP Sharma Oli-led government imposed an overnight ban on 26 social media platforms.
Justified in the name of tackling fake news and hate speech, and on the ground that these platforms failed to comply with new government regulations, the ban capped months of efforts to enforce restrictions on social media amounting to serious attacks on freedom of speech for its millions of users. These efforts have included the attempted passing of a “social media bill” introducing fines and imprisonment for content deemed “against national interest”. Yet by cutting off online expression, the regime only drove people into the streets: suddenly prevented from voicing their views on social media, many Nepalis brought them in the open air.
Of course, Big Tech platforms like Meta, Google, X etc are no friend of democracy. They are corporate monopolies who profit from data extraction, addictive algorithms, and surveillance, and do not hesitate to cut deals with authoritarian governments when it suits their interests. The issue here is not about defending these companies, but about defending the democratic right to free expression and communication against top-down government censorship and gag laws. Already on Sunday, journalists had marched through Kathmandu carrying placards reading “Freedom of expression is our right,” “The people’s voice cannot be silenced,” or “Democracy is being hacked, dictatorship is coming back.”
A crisis far deeper than a social media ban
While this government’s decision was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, the anger runs much deeper. Like in Indonesia, the grotesque contrast between the opulent lifestyle of politicians and the crushing poverty facing ordinary people has fed mass outrage. In the days and weeks leading to the protests, a viral “Nepo Kid” campaign spotlighted the children of politicians and influential figures, accusing them of enjoying luxury —foreign education, lavish cars, expensive holidays— while the rest of the country is struggling. Restricting access to social media was thus also a way for the government to curb exposure of its own rot.
Many home-made placards and slogans displayed by protesters point to a general frustration ranging from the ruling elite’s nepotism and widespread corruption to the lack of economic prospects for the new generations. Nepal’s heavy reliance on remittances —which make up nearly a third of the country’s GDP— is a stark expression of this crisis. Millions of young Nepalis are forced to seek work abroad, often in very exploitative conditions, because successive governments have failed to create jobs at home. In this context, social media apps are more than entertainment; they are a critical medium for families stretched across borders, helping them cope with the long separations provoked by mass migration.
Undoubtedly, the recent uprisings in other parts of South Asia have played an inspirational role. As The Kathmandu Post warned in its editorial, “The government would be foolish to take the youth lightly. Such impromptu youth-led movements have toppled even entrenched regimes, even in our own neighbourhood, most recently in Bangladesh.” No surprise, then, that some pro-BJP media in India have rushed to discredit the protests. Right-wing propagandist Arnab Goswami thundered on Republic World about Nepal’s “anarchic, dangerous stuff,” spinning wild conspiracy theories about Nepali protesters being in cohort with foreign tech companies and the US ‘deep state’, and warning Indians of similar developments at home. Such paranoia reveals less about Nepal than about the fear among capitalist elites across the region that their own youth and working classes may be tempted to follow the same path.
Deadly repression and PM Oli’s resignation
Spearheaded by young people and students —many still in their school and college uniforms— the protests on Monday spread rapidly from New Baneshwar in the capital city. There, protesters breached barricades near the Parliament building, only to be met with a bloody crackdown. The police responded with tear gas, water cannons, baton charges —then live ammunition following a shoot-at-sight order. “The police have been firing indiscriminately,” one protester told the ANI news agency. At least 19 people were killed in this murderous spree, with hospitals across the country overflowing with the injured.
The brutality, however, only accelerated the political unraveling of Oli’s government. Its attempt to set up an “inquiry committee” in order to investigate its own crimes fooled no one. A demonstrator interviewed by Al Jazeera on Tuesday said, “They killed so many youths yesterday who had so much to look forward to; now they can easily kill us all. We protest until this government is finished.”
By Monday night, the social media ban had already been scrapped and Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak, of the Nepali Congress, had tendered his resignation. These cracks gave fresh confidence to the youth to come back onto the streets the next day. Agriculture Minister Ramnath Adhikari’s resignation followed on Tuesday morning. In the afternoon, Education Minister Gyanendra Bahadur Karki became the third minister of the Nepali Congress to quit. Hours later, facing a collapsing cabinet and renewed protests, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli himself announced his resignation. Protesters were seen celebrating as his private residence in Bhaktapur went up in flames (as did the houses of several other prominent politicians, political parties’ offices and some government buildings).
This is a victory wrested by the bravery of Nepal’s youth —but won at a bloody cost. The state’s almost immediate turn to lethal repression, the imposition of curfews that were openly challenged, then the speed of the government’s retreat, and now the desperate pleas of senior officials for protesters to show ‘restraint’: all have laid bare how much the ruling class dreads this revolt and the storm it has unleashed.
The fact that protesters broke into the parliament again on Tuesday —the very site of the previous day’s bloodshed— and set the building ablaze is a powerful declaration that fear has shifted sides. What was meant to be the sanctum of the ruling elite has turned into a symbol of its weakness, engulfed by the fury of a generation that refuses to be silenced. Far from being cowed by repression, the youth have escalated their defiance, showing that the killings have not crushed the movement but hardened its resolve.
Even the opposition’s attempts to ride the wave have rung hollow. On Monday, former Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal (also known as ‘Prachanda’) publicly added his voice in support of the youth. Yet his house was not spared from people’s anger. The symbolism is unmistakable. Today the Maoists have become an integral part of the problem, not a credible alternative. Once promising radical change and revolution, the Maoist leadership has long since integrated itself into the establishment, reproducing many of the corrupt, bureaucratised and elitist politics it once vowed to destroy.
Despite their rhetoric, neither the Maoists in the opposition nor the “Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist)” —Oli’s own party, which was dominating the ruling coalition— have anything in common with genuine Marxism. Both now serve to manage capitalism in crisis, not to challenge it in any way. This is precisely why so many young Nepalis, born and raised in the shadow of their betrayals, are searching for new forms of resistance beyond the old parties.
The road ahead
What is already called Nepal’s “Gen Z revolution” is more than a flashpoint. It marks the political reawakening of the Nepali masses. This uprising has also underscored the international character of today’s rebellions. From Dhaka to Jakarta, and now Kathmandu, a common pattern emerges: complete disillusionment with bankrupt elites and their institutions, a yearning for dignity and opportunity, and the determination of a new generation to fight for both.
The struggle in Nepal is not finished. Thousands have remained on the streets, denouncing corruption, demanding justice for those massacred by the state and a wholesale transformation of the system.
The issue that has triggered this revolt also poses wider questions. While the protests have resulted in the lifting of the social media ban, the fight for free expression cannot be satisfied with handing a blank cheque to profit-hungry corporate giants. To defend real freedom of information and communication, both the authoritarian methods of the state and the undemocratic power of Big Tech monopolies need to be resisted —by demanding public ownership, democratic control and collective management of the digital spaces that millions depend on.
The people of Nepal have already shown they can wring concessions from governments —and sweep them from office altogether. The real question now is whether this energy can be forged into a lasting force that can transform Nepal’s society at its roots. That means guaranteeing well-paid jobs and secure livelihoods at home instead of mass exile abroad; breaking with institutional corruption and all elite privileges; freeing the country from dependence on remittances and foreign capital; uprooting caste, gender, and ethnic oppression; abolishing landlordism and ensuring “land to the tiller” through radical land redistribution; and establishing a real democracy, where the majority who produce society’s wealth can also decide how it is used.
The record of the last decade and a half speaks for itself: Nepal has gone through fourteen governments in sixteen years, each collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. This carousel of instability underlines one thing with crystal clarity —no faction of the existing ruling class is capable of offering any such way forward. Only a revolutionary government, rooted in the democratic self-organization of workers, youth, poor farmers and oppressed communities, can provide a durable alternative.
Nepal’s working class might not be very large nor concentrated in giant industrial units, but it still sustains the country’s economy through countless forms of labor —in transport, logistics, public services, small-scale manufacturing, tourism, construction, hydropower, agriculture, and of course through the labour of migrants abroad. The 29-day teachers’ strike in April 2025 —which won broad solidarity and forced important concessions— was a vivid reminder that this workforce holds important latent power that, if brought together, could be transformed into a decisive political lever for change.
Today, the protests toppled a Prime Minister. Tomorrow, organised, united, and linking up with their siblings in struggle across South Asia and with the vast army of migrant workers in the diaspora, the masses in Nepal could fight for much more: the overthrow of a capitalist order that survives on their silence, exploitation and sacrifice — and the building of a democratic and genuinely socialist Nepal, rooted in the power of workers, youth, women, and all the oppressed.
