Nepal’s protests showed that democracy is not confined to ballot boxes or parliamentary halls—it thrives wherever people, armed with conviction and connection, refuse to be ignored.
In early September 2025, Nepal’s streets became the crucible of a generational reckoning. What began as outrage over a sweeping government ban on social media platforms quickly transformed into something far larger: a nationwide cry for transparency, fairness, and accountability.
The so-called “Gen Z protests” were not merely another episode of political unrest—they were a confrontation between a digitally native generation and an entrenched political elite unwilling to cede control. They marked the moment when young Nepalis, armed with VPNs and Discord servers instead of party manifestos, challenged the very architecture of power.
At the heart of this eruption lay a paradox. The government justified its ban on 26 major social media platforms—Facebook, X, YouTube, and others—as a regulatory measure designed to capture digital tax revenue and enforce local compliance.
Yet the timing was far too convenient. In the weeks prior, social media had been awash with outrage over “Nepo Kids”—the children of the political elite flaunting their wealth, foreign degrees, and lavish lifestyles while the average Nepali scraped by on roughly $1,400 a year. The images of privilege, filtered through Instagram and TikTok, were not just offensive—they were existentially infuriating. They exposed the gaping moral and material distance between those who governed and those who were governed.
When the government silenced the platforms, it inadvertently silenced livelihoods, too. One-third of Nepal’s GDP comes from remittances—earnings sent home by citizens working abroad. Many young people, unable to find jobs in a stagnant domestic economy, relied on online work and small digital enterprises to survive. To ban social media, in this context, was to strip away not only freedom of speech but also economic survival. The state underestimated how deeply digital life had embedded itself in the fabric of youth identity and opportunity.
And so the movement was born—unplanned, leaderless at first, but propelled by the raw energy of a generation that had grown up connected, restless, and impatient with excuses. On Discord servers and encrypted channels, young organizers like Sudan Gurung and Shaswot Lamichhane reimagined activism for the digital age.
The very platforms meant for gaming and casual conversation became arenas of political coordination and civic education. Here, students debated, voted, and even simulated elections to propose Sushila Karki, Nepal’s former Chief Justice, as interim Prime Minister. It was chaotic and imperfect, but also radical in its transparency. The world watched as digital democracy—once a buzzword—took tangible form in a Himalayan nation’s hour of crisis.
The protests, however, were not without tragedy. At least 72 people lost their lives, including 19 young students and a 12-year-old child. Many were killed by gunfire, others in the crush of violent clashes between protesters and police. Hospitals and public buildings were vandalized; the line between righteous anger and destructive chaos blurred. Yet even amid the smoke and sorrow, something irreversible had shifted. By the time Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli resigned on September 9, 2025, the old political order had been shaken to its core.
Sushila Karki’s appointment as interim Prime Minister just days later was more than a procedural response—it was a concession to a new social reality. The young people of Nepal had demonstrated that they could mobilize, deliberate, and even propose leadership alternatives without waiting for permission from political elders. In a nation where power has long flowed through dynasties, this was a profound statement.
The Gen Z protests of 2025 were not about the destruction of the state but its reclamation. They laid bare a simple truth: that governance without transparency, prosperity without fairness, and authority without accountability are untenable in the digital age. Nepal’s young citizens did not seek chaos; they sought clarity. They demanded that their leaders live by the same rules as everyone else.
Yet international coverage often mischaracterized these events. Only a handful of headlines hastily labeled Nepal’s September 2025 protests an “uprising,” a term that oversimplified their true nature. What unfolded was a massive civic mobilization—forceful yet intentional—aimed at demanding accountability from leaders without dismantling the democratic framework itself. The young demonstrators called for reform and resignation, not revolution. By contrast, Bangladesh’s contemporaneous movement was rightly described as an uprising, as it sought to unseat an increasingly authoritarian government and restore democratic freedoms. Both reflected citizens reclaiming agency in very different political contexts—one through protest within a functioning democracy, the other through uprising against its erosion.
History will remember the Gen Z movements in Nepal and, a year earlier, in Bangladesh not only for their casualties or immediate political outcomes, but for how they redefined civic engagement. When the governments cut off their nations’ digital arteries, they expected silence. Instead, their actions awakened a generation that spoke louder, smarter, and more collectively than ever before.
Bangladesh’s uprising and Nepal’s protests showed that democracy is not confined to ballot boxes or parliamentary halls—it thrives wherever people, armed with conviction and connection, refuse to be ignored.
Beenish Ashraf, a member of the Global Affairs’ Writers Association, regularly covers serious topics such as right to information, digital media, information war, cultural hegemony, human rights, and humanitarian crises.
OpEd Column Syndication 