Within the 48 hours that Nepal’s Gen-Z revolution unfolded, one query echoed throughout the nation: “The place is their Lenin?” However maybe that query missed the purpose. For many years, each Nepali revolution has been undone not by its enemies however by those that claimed to steer it. This time, the absence of a single figurehead was not a weak point; it was the motion’s biggest power.
When the protests subsided, one identify started to flow into: Sudan Gurung, head of the youth-led organisation Hami Nepal. However Gurung didn’t lead the rebellion; he emerged solely after it was over, extra as a spokesperson than a commander. His late prominence was proof of what made this revolt completely different. By refusing to anoint a pacesetter, Nepal’s younger protesters broke with a previous the place energy was at all times concentrated within the arms of some. They confirmed that change may emerge from the collective somewhat than the charismatic.
But the identical revolution that reimagined management additionally revealed the large human value of reclaiming energy. In each human and financial phrases, it was among the many most damaging 48 hours in Nepal’s historical past. At the very least 74 folks had been killed and about 2,113 injured within the clashes. All three pillars of democracy – the parliament constructing, the Supreme Courtroom and the Singha Durbar – had been torched. The violence was not confined to the capital; at the very least 300 native authorities workplaces throughout the nation had been broken. Even the fourth pillar of democracy, the media, got here underneath assault, with the Kantipur Media Home, Nepal’s largest non-public outlet, set ablaze. The financial harm has been estimated at as much as three trillion Nepalese rupees (about $21bn), with preliminary authorities figures placing public infrastructure losses close to one trillion, almost half of Nepal’s annual gross home product.
By September 10, the state equipment had collapsed. The prime minister had resigned, parliament was in ruins, and the military was the one establishment sustaining order. Amid this political vacuum, the revolution’s decentralised nature grew to become much more seen. Protest organisers used the “Youths Towards Corruption” Discord channel as an impromptu public sq. to determine on a path ahead. The so-called “Discord Election” was chaotic, with 1000’s debating. One report described it as a “marathon session extra befitting a Twitch stream”, with moderators struggling to handle a flood of opinions from customers with nameless handles and anime avatars. Greater than 7,500 folks voted on the platform, in the end choosing former Chief Justice Sushila Karki as their nominee for interim prime minister.
Nevertheless, judging this revolution solely by these occasions can be an injustice to historical past. The rebellion was not deliberate; it was a response. We had been merely highschool and college college students protesting. The bloodbath of 19 protesters, some nonetheless of their uniforms, on the primary day reworked peaceable dissent into nationwide fury. The symbols of a state that might kill its personal youngsters grew to become the inevitable targets.
Now, the bodily chaos has subsided. A brand new interim authorities with technocratic ministers has given Nepalis renewed hope. However that hope comes with a problem: Will we fall into the previous sample of outsourcing energy to leaders, or will we maintain them to a brand new normal? For 48 hours, the folks of Nepal believed that energy resided with the general public. This was not merely a perception; it was a reality the general public stumbled upon via chaos.
Transferring ahead, the problem for Nepalis, each Gen-Z and past, is to always remember the teachings of this revolution. Historical past is not going to overlook what occurred on September 8 and 9, however we should additionally ask how and why it occurred.
To grasp this, we should view Nepal’s political historical past not as a collection of remoted occasions however as a recurring sample. The 2025 rebellion didn’t emerge from nowhere; it was the newest eruption in a protracted cycle of revolt and betrayal. A Marxist analytical lens can assist, not as ideology however as a framework. We are able to borrow the ideas of “base” and “superstructure” and adapt them politically. The “political base” could be understood as Nepal’s entrenched system of energy, a community of patronage, corruption and governance that sustains the established order. The “political superstructure” is the drive that rises to problem it, typically an organised social gathering and others, within the case of Gen-Z, a decentralised public. This framework reveals a tragic cycle: In Nepal, each new superstructure that succeeds merely turns into the brand new base.
Think about 1951, when Nepal noticed its first revolution of the century. From this lens, it was the political superstructure rising towards the previous autocratic base of the Rana regime. Figures like B P Koirala, King Tribhuvan and the 5 martyrs grew to become the revolution’s heroes, however one can not overlook the roles of the exiled events, the aspiring bourgeoisie and a rehabilitated monarchy. Hopes had been excessive, and Koirala, particularly, grew to become the face of that hope, later turning into Nepal’s first democratically elected prime minister.
These hopes, nevertheless, by no means crystallised. Barely a decade later, King Mahendra dissolved parliament, abolished the events and launched the Panchayat system, vesting sovereignty within the monarchy itself. Whereas some glorify this period as a golden age, the discontent it produced led to the protests of 1980 and in the end to the Individuals’s Motion I in 1990, the second nice revolution of contemporary Nepal.
That revolution, too, adopted the acquainted sample. It restored multi-party democracy, once more shifting the political base. But the democratic elite, composed of the identical events that had fought the Panchayat, did not dismantle the underlying constructions of patronage and feudalism. As an alternative, they grew to become a brand new political base, perfecting a kleptocratic system that might lead the nation right into a bloody civil battle. The Maoist insurgency, brewing for years earlier than its first assault, marked one other darkish chapter.
Given its roots in communist idea, the Maoist motion, culminating in Individuals’s Motion II, appears to suit this Marxist lens completely. However regardless of its ideological veneer, it too repeated Nepal’s tragic cycle. The Maoist elites didn’t change the political base; they merely joined it. Commanders grew to become ministers, presiding over the identical corrupt programs they as soon as denounced. They inherited the previous networks of patronage, perpetuating the identical kleptocracy and ignoring the financial contradictions on the coronary heart of their revolution. The slogans modified, however the constructions stayed the identical.
In hindsight, the deadly flaw of all these revolutions lay of their management. Throughout the political spectrum, leaders grew to become opportunists who sustained a kleptocratic regime disguised as democracy and branded as “Individuals’s Actions”. The outcomes by no means materialised for the folks. On this mild, the leaderlessness of Nepal’s latest Gen-Z revolution was not a weak point however its biggest strategic power.
This historic trajectory exhibits that the Gen-Z revolution of 2025 was not a sudden outburst however the detonation of a bomb many years within the making. The social media ban was merely the spark. Every “failed” revolution added stress on a political base blind to Nepal’s financial contradictions, and on a public that had lengthy internalised the necessity for revolt.
The duty earlier than Nepal’s revolutionary youth now’s clear: To dismantle, relentlessly and transparently, the cycle of betrayal by management itself. The aim is now not to alter who holds energy however to alter what energy means. We mustn’t ever once more outsource hope, company or essential considering to any self-proclaimed saviour. The lesson of September is that our solely hope is ourselves. It has at all times been ourselves – not the king, not the prime minister, not the president, not the mayor. We can not permit one other chief to hijack the folks’s company. Accountability should change into a part of Nepal’s civic DNA to make sure a vigilant, organised and awake citizenry. The times of September 8 and 9 won’t ever be forgotten and mustn’t ever be repeated. The ability should stay the place it was found: With the folks.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
