New Delhi, India — The rattle of iron gates seemed like drumbeats as the gang surged ahead. A sea of our bodies stormed by the barricades, which had stood as sentinels of energy barely hours in the past.
The hallways of the home of the nation’s chief echoed with the thunder of muddy footsteps. Some smashed home windows and artefacts, others picked up luxurious bedsheets or footwear.
The constructing and its plush interiors had been symbols of crushing authority, impenetrable and out of attain for the nation’s teeming thousands and thousands. Now, nevertheless, they briefly belonged to the individuals.
This was Nepal final week. It was additionally Sri Lanka in 2022, and Bangladesh in 2024.
As Nepal, a rustic of 30 million individuals sandwiched between India and China, now plots its future in methods alien to conventional electoral democracies, the spate of youth-led protest actions which have toppled governments one after the opposite in South Asia has additionally sparked a broader query: Is the world’s most densely populated area Floor Zero for Gen Z revolutions?
“It’s actually very putting. There’s this type of new politics of instability,” mentioned Paul Staniland, an affiliate professor of political science on the College of Chicago, whose analysis focuses on political violence and worldwide safety in South Asia.
On Thursday, some 10,000 Nepali youth, together with many within the diaspora, voted for an interim prime minister not by bodily or electoral ballots, however by a web based ballot on Discord, a platform primarily utilized by players. Nepal, the place three days of protests in opposition to corruption and nepotism turned violent, with a crackdown by safety forces resulting in the dying of greater than 70 individuals, has introduced new elections in March.
However the protests, which compelled Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to resign days after he had mocked the Gen Z origins of the agitators, have already proven that in nation after nation in South Asia, more and more pissed off younger individuals are grabbing energy and declaring themselves boss once they really feel betrayed by political methods out of tune with their calls for.
It is a dramatic shift for South Asia, a area that has lengthy been residence to main political protests, however not often ones the place regimes are overthrown, Staniland informed Al Jazeera. “It is a very completely different sort of orientation from a world that has army coups, or the primary type of political battle is one thing else,” he added, referring to the methods political crises within the area have beforehand usually performed out.
Every of the protest actions – in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal – was rooted in particular histories and was triggered by occasions distinctive to that nation. But, analysts say, there’s a frequent thread that runs by the craze that exploded in these international locations: a era that’s refusing to stay with damaged guarantees, and the components driving them.
These actions, consultants say, additionally seem like studying from one another.
From Colombo to Dhaka to Kathmandu: The backdrop
The Gen-Z protests in Kathmandu kicked off after the federal government banned social media platforms, citing misuse and the failure of the platforms to register with regulators. However the grievances ran a lot deeper: inequality, corruption and nepotism have been the main triggers for younger individuals in a rustic the place remittances despatched residence by Nepalis overseas symbolize a 3rd of the nation’s financial system.
1000’s of youngsters hit the streets, many nonetheless at school uniforms. Greater than 70 individuals have been shot useless, and a whole bunch extra have been injured.
However the violence unleashed on protesters by safety forces solely aggravated the disaster. Some demonstrators torched the parliament, whereas others set the homes of different political events, some leaders, and even Nepal’s largest media home on hearth. Protesters additionally broke into Oli’s home, ransacking it.
Oli resigned a day later.
It was very completely different in Bangladesh in 2024. There, it started with a student-led marketing campaign in opposition to discriminatory job quotas. However by the summer season, after a collection of police crackdowns on largely peaceable protesters killed a whole bunch of civilians, the motion’s character shifted to a broad coalition demanding an finish to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s lengthy hardline authorities.
Protests had a free management construction: scholar leaders issued ultimatums and lists of calls for to the federal government, and opposition figures offered assist. All the pieces Hanisa’s authorities did – from brutal assaults on scholar agitators to telecommunications blackouts – solely aggravated the disaster. Finally, on August 5, 2024, the prime minister give up, escaping to shut ally India by helicopter.
Two years earlier than the upheaval in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka had its personal second. There, the protests have been a response to an financial collapse as Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt. By March 2022, each day life had grow to be dire: 12-hour energy blackouts, miles-long queues for gasoline and cooking gasoline, and inflation above 50 %.
Sri Lanka’s “Aragalaya” motion, which stands for “The Battle” in Sinhala, was born. Youth activists arrange a protest camp they referred to as “GotaGoGama” (“Gotta Go Village”), in entrance of Colombo’s Presidential Secretariat. It was a reference to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose household had ruled the nation for 15 of the earlier 18 years. The positioning turned a hub of rallies, artwork performances and speeches.
In mid-July, Rajapaksa fled the nation after his residence was overrun by demonstrators.
Demonstrators seize footage on their cellphones outdoors the Parliament complicated, throughout a protest in opposition to the killing of 19 individuals, after anticorruption protests and through a curfew in Kathmandu, Nepal, September 9, 2025 (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)
‘Dissonance was too excessive’
To Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, the overthrow of highly effective governments by youth-led actions within the three international locations has frequent foundations: unaddressed socioeconomic disparities and corruption by an entrenched political elite that left them disconnected from the challenges of youthful generations.
Many in Gen Z have skilled two financial recessions of their lifetimes: in 2008-09 after which within the wake of COVID-19. Ganguly mentioned that the era had additionally two early life in isolation, minimize off from their friends bodily, although these pandemic years additionally amplified their use of digital platforms to unprecedented ranges.
All of this occurred whereas they have been more and more being ruled by leaders of their grandparents’ age. When these governments have been toppled, Nepal’s Oli was 73, Bangladesh’s Hasina was 76, and Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa was 74.
“The youth in South Asia just isn’t capable of finding something to attach them to their political leaders,” mentioned Ganguly. “The dissonance was too excessive.” And that type of hole in discrepancies between their lives, and that of the politicians and their kids, has pushed the anger, she added.
That is the rationale why protests in opposition to nepotism – which took the type of the #NepoKid social media pattern in Indonesia, which has additionally witnessed mass agitations in current weeks – additionally resonated in Nepal, say consultants.
The commonest theme between the youth-led actions in South Asia, mentioned Staniland, was the power to think about a greater political and financial future, and see the hole between what they aspire to, and the fact.
“Their strengths are these forward-looking set of wishes and grievances, and a way of connection,” Staniland informed Al Jazeera.
These international locations even have overlapping demographic components: Practically 50 % of the inhabitants in all three international locations is under 28. Their per capita gross home product (GDP) is way decrease than the worldwide common, however the literacy price is greater than 70 %.
Specialists say that the socioeconomic emphasis of the actions, quite than one primarily based on secessionist calls for or grievances of anybody minority, helped them attraction to wider audiences throughout their international locations.
“When these governments are confronted with protest, they don’t have that many levers to fall again on, particularly amid an unequal (society) or slowing down of financial progress,” mentioned Staniland.
Demonstrators sleep on Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s mattress on the President’s home, on the day after protesters entered the constructing after Rajapaksa fled, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, July 10, 2022 (Dinuka Liyanawatte)
Gen Z edge
Rumela Sen, college director of the grasp’s in worldwide affairs programme at Columbia College, informed Al Jazeera that if one appears past the visuals of rage rising from these international locations’ protests, “there’s a very democratic, honest aspiration for political inclusion, financial justice, and holding their elected representatives accountable”.
With a younger demography, and each entry and savvy in relation to the web, Sen mentioned, South Asia’s Gen Z has managed to leverage digital platforms “effortlessly for group, organisation and self-expression”.
Blocking web entry, or particular platforms, has solely backfired on governments.
In Nepal, the Gen Z protesters simply “didn’t need to un-see (the #NepoKids’) lavish life (and) international schooling that was constructed on the useless our bodies of their future,” mentioned Sen.
“There’s something genuine about this generational framing – the ethical outrage of the youth in opposition to a era that’s stealing their future,” she added .
“The slogans about equity, future, jobs, mixed with the tech savviness, are giving these actions an edge over the standard elites.”
Police particular job drive personnel block roads to stop demonstrators from reaching the Presidential secretariat workplace in Colombo (File: Arun Sankar/AFP)
Are they studying from one another?
Jeevan Sharma, a political anthropologist on South Asia, who’s at the moment in Kathmandu for analysis, mentioned that these protest actions have discovered from one another, in addition to from different youth-led international protests, like in Indonesia and the Philippines.
“Nepali youth have been carefully witnessing and following the actions in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,” he mentioned, including that the Gen Z-led political motion has not appeared in isolation, however out of deep-seated disillusionment within the nation’s political management.
Staniland agreed. “Definitely, these actions are watching and studying and being impressed by each other.”
Sen of Columbia College, whose analysis focuses on civil battle and insurgent governance in South Asia, mentioned that the protest ways utilized in Nepal and different regional international locations – together with hashtag campaigns on social media and decentralised organising – symbolize an rising playbook of digital protest.
The one query is: The place will these protests erupt subsequent?
