Gen Z rises up in Nepal

Wedged between China and India high up in the Himalayas, Nepal is usually known for rich foreigners dropping a cool $50k to climb Everest, or scoffing down piles of momo dumplings warm enough to take the edge off Kathmandu’s winters.

But Nepal is now facing its most serious political crisis since 2008, when it brought Maoist insurgents back in from the cold, ditched its monarchy, and became a republic. 

So… what went wrong?

You can see seeds of today’s crisis in that single sentence above, but the latest wobbles started last week when the centre-left-Communist ruling coalition banned 26 social media platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook for failing to register locally.

Officials said it was to ensure these foreign platforms complied with local laws, but the ban didn’t go down well given millions of Nepalis abroad rely on those apps to call home.

The timing was suspicious, too.

For weeks, young Nepalis had been venting online about corruption and inequality under the hashtag #nepokids, mocking the Kardashian-esque lifestyles of political kids in one of Asia’s poorest countries. So last week’s ban felt not only like proof corrupt elites were out of touch, but also that they were now actively trying to silence the people.

Those escalating protests then bubbled over on Monday when… 

• Security forces opened fire, leaving at least 30 demonstrators dead 
• Protestors torched the Hilton, parliament, supreme court, and the PM’s house
• The finance minister himself got chased (then fly-kicked) by an angry mob
• The government then reversed its social media ban, and
• The prime minister and four ministers then resigned.

And that was Monday!

Then, with the military clearing the streets of Kathmandu, youth-led protestors went full Alanis Morissette, using one of Nepal’s very same banned apps (Discord) to actually vote for a new interim leader to fill the power vacuum! The winner…?

🥁🥁🥁

Nepal’s highly-regarded former chief justice (Sushila Karki), who had herself joined the demonstrations and issued fiery denunciations against the protestor deaths.

So she’s now nominally in charge (subject to the military’s whims), and just gave her first international interview, pledging to lead just for “a short time” towards a new start.

But for us, the most striking aspect was who got this exclusive: a network in India! Why?

Amid all the China-India rivalry, Beijing will see this week’s upheaval as a threat to its foothold in strategically located Nepal, whether the string of recent trade and military deals, or even getting the (ex)PM to buck tradition by visiting China (instead of India) first!

But now, Nepal’s new leader has used a TV appearance in India to highlight her Hindi, her education in India, her home near India’s border, plus even greet India’s leader. And implicit in her remark that international relations are about the people (not just governments), is a sense she wants to rebalance Nepal back towards where its cultural and economic ties have always been strongest: with India.

So as the military curfew lifts today (Thursday) and Kathmandu international airport finally reopens, it’s not just Gen-Z counting its blessings. It’s probably neighbouring India, too.

Intrigue’s Take

We were tempted to write this one using Gen-Z slang like ‘slay’ and ‘sus’, but after getting hospitalised with acute-cringe by watching others try that, we just kept it 💯 (sorry).

There’s now a rhetorical struggle around how to frame these events: some in the foreign media like to pitch it as hip youths using their shiny apps to march for a brighter future.

Others frame it as an old story re-emerging via new tech, as Nepali students join those in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Indonesia, and beyond to hold the powerful to account.

But the sheer level of violence, destruction, and looting that unfolded this week should be enough to nudge us towards an acknowledgement that it’s just too early to say: students themselves are deploring the chaos, and suggesting extremist elements are to blame.

And that right there hints at the tensions still lurking within: there are groups with wildly different views on how today’s Nepal should look, ranging from Maoists who terrorised the countryside for decades trying to establish their classless utopia, through to monarchists who’ve still been protesting this year to bring back the king (exiled in India).

But even any nostalgia for those royal days is clouded by the fact the last king only rose to power after his brother (the crown prince) went on a 2001 shooting rampage at the palace, wiping out most of Nepal’s line of succession!

So let’s just say the Nepali people could’ve done far worse than end up with someone of Judge Karki’s calibre. Let’s see what she does next. 

Sound smarter:

• Japan’s Viber and China’s TikTok were the only two platforms that complied with Nepal’s brief new rules, so were the only two excluded from the brief ban.