Nepal’s Gen Z Revolution and the Politics of Visibility

The Gen-Z-led uprising in Nepal did not erupt out of nowhere – it emerged from intersecting pressures that had been quietly building for decades. The first was a collective discontent with entrenched political corruption and nepotism – a system where bribery has long been normalised, taxpayer money is routinely embezzled into private pockets, and political leaders live lavish lives with little accountability. This simmering resentment found a visual language on TikTok, where young Nepalis began mirroring a trend seen across Asia: publicly calling out the children of politicians by exposing their designer clothes, luxury travel, and elite lifestyles.

The second trigger came when the Nepali government abruptly banned major social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and X, citing regulatory failures. Many citizens however, believed the ban was an attempt to suppress the growing anti-corruption discourse ahead of elections. These two forces collided on 8 September 2025 as tens of thousands took to the streets in protest. What began peacefully turned deadly by the afternoon, when police fired live rounds into crowds. In the days that followed, the total death toll rose to 76, with over 2,000 people injured.i

The public’s anger proved uncontainable over the next two days. Protesters set fire to businesses, the parliament building, and several politicians’ homes. Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak resigned. The unrest eventually subsided only after the military assumed control, imposing a curfew of three days. Meanwhile, over 100,000 people, mainly from Gen Z, discussed and debated on Discord groups about potential interim leaders.ii

Sushila Karki, Nepal’s first female chief justice, emerged as the most popular choice due to her strong anti-corruption stance and was subsequently elected as interim Prime Minister through formal political channels, making her the first woman in Nepal’s history to hold the highest political office. Her rise was not just a response to crisis, but a reflection of how public trust, digital momentum, and political urgency began to align. These events can be explored further through three critical lenses: digital mobilisation, diaspora involvement, and gendered visibility.

Digital Mobilisation and Emotion

The digital space was not merely a tool of mobilisation; it was the seed, the catalyst, and the primary site of the Gen Z revolution in Nepal. TikTok, often seen as a platform for frivolous content, revealed its political potency almost overnight. The sweeping social media ban, which was an attempt to silence dissent, only intensified the outrage. Once citizens began to use VPNs to regain access to blocked platforms, the revolution unfolded in real time online.

Instagram stories, TikTok livestreams, and Telegram channels provided minute-by-minute updates from Kathmandu and other urban centres. Protesters documented police advances, crowd dispersals, injuries, and deaths. For those watching from both within Nepal and globally, the emotional impact was overwhelming.

I personally experienced emotional upheaval from compulsively refreshing feeds, oscillating between satisfaction and despair and feeling intensely impacted yet helpless. Many Nepalis described similar symptoms of digital activism fatigue, including doom-scrolling, desensitisation, and collective burnout, even as we felt morally unable to look away.

The emotional flow online translated into action on the ground. Gen Z creators produced content ranging from satirical political art to impassioned monologues and grassroots efforts to support victims’ familiesiii. Graffiti became a form of protest, covering walls with messages of anger and dissent. A black flag with a skull and crossbones (from the popular Japanese anime series One Piece) began to pop up in public spaces, as was seen in the Gen Z movements in Indonesia, the Philippines, Morocco, and Peru.iv

Heart-wrenching moments captured on film became internationally viral. On 8 September, footage circulated of protesters running amid gunfire, bloodied bodies being carried through the streets, and a schoolboy shot dead with a bullet in his head.v The killing of a child amplified public fury tenfold.

In the days that followed, social media overflowed with videos of politicians being beaten and their homes burning, protesters destroying luxury goods, suitcases of cash set alight, and Singha Durbar – the 117-year-old parliament building – being engulfed in flames.

Public reactions were sharply divided along generational lines. Older Nepalis condemned the violence, arson, and looting, expressing sympathy for politicians and business owners. Many Gen Z protesters, however, framed these acts as retribution and reclamation of stolen wealth. This anger was fuelled by years of frustration with corruption scandals, economic inequality, and a political system perceived as deeply unaccountable. The speed with which ‘trends’ spread on social media raises a critical question: how much of this revolution was deeply felt conviction, and how much of it was performative momentum driven by herd mentality?

Nepali Diaspora Involvement

There are approximately 5–6 million Nepalis living in more than 80 countries.vi The unexpected revolution triggered strong reactions and emotions across the diaspora. Because the protests unfolded online almost as much as they did physically, boundaries became blurred between ‘here’ and ‘there’. The internet seemed to compress geography – Nepali citizens thousands of kilometres away from home felt the same emotional immediacy as those on the ground.

Across Australia, the Gulf states, Europe, and North America, Nepalis expressed solidarity in different ways: reposting protest footage, organising candlelight vigils in mourning for the lives lost, and donating to emergency funds.

When Western media outlets inaccurately framed the protests as a reaction solely to the social media ban, Nepalis across the diaspora flooded comment sections with corrections, emphasising that the revolt was fundamentally an anti-corruption movement. Many outlets revised their framing in response – a small but significant victory, and an example of Global South citizens reclaiming narrative power from Western media.

On a personal level, family group chats became emotional battlegrounds. Elders questioned the unrestrained destruction of property and government buildings; younger people defended these acts as a necessary rupture. These intergenerational tensions echoed the same conversations happening within families in Nepal.

For many in the diaspora, the burning of Singha Durbar was particularly disconcerting. My own mother, a 57-year-old Nepali woman who migrated to Australia in 2008, told me, ‘It broke my heart. That building was beautiful, one of the most remarkable heritage sites in Asia. It held our history. Why would they do this?’

Her grief reflects a generational attachment to national symbols, where buildings hold sentimental value rather than political meaning. By contrast, Gen Z, lacking lived memory of these sites, often relate to them less sentimentally, shaped instead by a political consciousness that is less rooted in nationalism and more defined by a willingness to confront systemic injustice.

For some diaspora youth, the protests felt like a reconnection to the country. Migration often creates distance not just from place but also from political urgency, yet watching the protests unfold digitally reawakened a sense of care and responsibility towards change in Nepal. For others, it magnified frustration: the pain of watching history unfold without being able to step in. Anita, a 21-year-old student living in London, told me in conversation, ‘I felt so proud to see my community stand up against the bourgeoise but also frustrated that I was unable to participate physically.’

Gendered Visibility

The dominant visuals of the Gen Z revolution – photojournalism, viral videos, and international headlines – have been overwhelmingly male. Images of young men throwing stones, confronting police, scaling gates, and occupying burning buildings came to define the face of the protests.

Such imagery reinforces the idea that political change is something led and owned by men. Meanwhile, women’s labour – organisational, emotional, and logistical – remains largely invisible. Throughout the revolution and its aftermath, women have circulated information, documented events, fundraised, and sustained online discourse, yet they are rarely in positions of leadership or receive recognition. This illustrates how patriarchal norms persist even within radical movements. Men dominate public space: they hold the camera, and thus they become history. Women are placed in secondary roles, and their contributions often go unrecognised.

Feminist journalists and digital activists have begun to challenge this erasure through self-documentation, including videos, essays, and critical commentary reclaiming space and authorship. However, this visibility often comes with heightened risk, harassment, and backlash, as seen in the treatment of female public figures during the uprising.vii

Between September 2025 and March 2026, Nepal’s political landscape underwent a significant shift. The national election held on 5 March was conducted peacefully across the country and resulted in a sweeping victory for the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP). Its leader, Balendra Shah, widely known as ‘Balen’ and previously the mayor of Kathmandu, became Nepal’s youngest prime minister at 35.

This marks a notable departure from the dominance of established political forces led by figures such as KP Sharma Oli, who across multiple terms over the past decade, came to symbolise an older political order increasingly criticised for stagnation and unresponsiveness.

While Balen himself is not Gen Z, his rise was undeniably propelled by younger voters. Disillusioned with traditional party politics, many rallied behind a campaign that promised accountability, transparency, and structural reform, signalling a generational shift in both political participation and expectation.

Despite these wins, there were also limitations. Although the Nepali diaspora (non-resident Nepalis) participated in the revolution and the surrounding political discourses even from afar, they remained excluded from the formal democratic process, unable to participate at the ballot box. The participation of women in the election remained low. Even though Nepal’s constitution requires 33% representation of women, parties continue to rely on the proportional representation system to meet quotas rather than nominating women in direct races.viii Despite the rhetoric of change, women remained largely absent from the ballot, once again making up barely a tenth of candidates, a pattern that Nepal’s elections have failed to break for years.ix

There is still a long road ahead when it comes to truly equitable and intersectional political representation, but optimism and a sense of possibility are beginning to reshape what Nepal’s future could look like.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung e.V.