Uncertain Terms

SMITH GAIRE, a first-year undergraduate student of chemical engineering at Kathmandu University, was returning home from Dhulikhel, a town on the edge of the Kathmandu Valley, where he had spent the weekend with his relatives. It was about 7.30 am on 8 September. It had been a couple of hours since Kathmandu had woken up and the streets were already crowded with people. The bus reached a crossing leading to Maitighar Mandala, a place of protest, akin to Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. Gaire saw several students in school uniforms marching on the road with national flags.

Gaire had heard that the youth in Nepal had planned to come out in protest that day. Frustration against politicians had been bubbling over online for the last three or four months, especially among “Gen Z” Nepalis, those in their twenties. Videos criticising “nepo babies”—children of the elite, whose lavish lives were seen as symbols of endemic corruption—had been circulating online in recent weeks, echoing a trend from the Philippines. Then came the catalyst. The government decided to ban social-media platforms, such as X and Facebook, that had not registered themselves in Nepal.

“Nepal was overwhelmed with corruption. Young people are not finding work. The situation of education, too, is not good. We have been speaking against all this for a long time,” Kabi Paudel, a 28-year-old who is pursuing a master’s degree, told me. “We work in different sectors, and some of us are content creators. So, when the government banned social media, we felt like our voice, too, was being silenced.” He emphasised that the aim of the protest was to demand an end to corruption.

After the ban, dedicated social-media pages and online forums calling for a protest sprang up. One such page, called gen.znepal, posted for the first time on 6 September and quickly amassed over twenty-five thousand followers. A post on the page asked students to meet at Maitighar Mandala for a peaceful protest. The pages of Hami Nepal, a sociopolitical activist group, also issued a call that day. Its 36-year-old leader, Sudan Gurung, posted a video on Instagram, asking the youth of Nepal to “stand up and say, ‘Ab Pugyo’”—Enough. “For too long, corruption has stolen our future, stolen our dreams, and stolen the dignity of our nation,” the caption of the video said. “Do not stay silent. Do not stay home.”