Political transitions are volatile and unstable, brimming with hopes, impatience and disappointments, as witnessed in the leaderless Gen Z Nepal uprising. The post revolt imagined political space is fuzzy, fractured and without ideological direction.

Many a Gen Z activist, overwhelmed by the toppling of the government and dissolution of Parliament within 48 hours and faced with the political vacuum, voiced a sense of foreboding. Indigenous rights activist Tashi Lahzom spoke of her fears of the day after. “Am I, a citizen going to wake up as the King’s subject? …That’s really scary”, she said, seized with anxiety at the movement’s rumoured lurch towards an autocratic takeover.

In her historical narrative, the marginalisation of Nepal’s janajati or indigenous peoples dates from the monarchy. “An autocratic mind-set means an assault on the hard won struggles for federalism, secularism and social inclusion,” Tashi worried. Her fellow panellist, Madhesh rights activist Anjali Sah amplified those fears. “[I feared], waking up to the end of democracy, a military coup, or perhaps no change at all. And at what cost, the loss of so many lives, the destruction of heritage buildings, what for, if even what we have [federalism, secularism] is lost…” ,

Through the WhatsApp Discord platform, the Gen Z ingeniously crowdsourced a democratic digital vote in support of the former Chief Justice Sushila Karki to lead the interim government and oversee the holding of elections in six months. But the hollow ring of despair of “What for” continued to reverberate especially against the contemporary history of Naya Nepal’s many false dawn, following the Jana Andolans I (1990) and Jana Andolan II (2006), and the constitutional restructuring processes : CA I (2008) and CA II (2013-2015).

The old guard isn't going anywhere

Can the 2025 Gen Z uprising catalyse a socially inclusive, politically representative and economically redistributive Nepal? Will the youth Andolan shatter the circle of self serving egotistical, power sharing political leaders whose consociationalism model of multi-party democracy is focused on the making and breaking of governments and not on governance?

To all appearances, already the old guard of the ruling left and liberal parties – the Unified Marxist –Leninist (UML) as well as the centrist Nepali Congress is dusting off the detritus of discredited rejection. As yet, there is no indication of their withdrawal and a reformed party led by younger cadres contesting the March 2026 elections. The Maoist parties have been quick to respond to leadership transition. Baburam Bhatarai, the former CPN (Maoist) Prime Minister was the first to resign as party head of his splintered small party. A week later Nepal's CPN (Maoist Centre) dissolved its central committee, removing Puhpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) as chairman.

The ever resilient Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, although forced to resign as head of government appears resistant to relinquish control of the UML party apparatus, Freed from the army’s ‘protective custody’ and incommunicado silence, he has aerially distanced himself from the police excesses on peaceful protestors and of owning any responsibility for the legacy of misgovernance and corruption that drove the protests.

While attention has been focused on the new political contenders, Balan Shah, the popular mayor of Kathmandu and Rabi Lamichanni, a TV anchor turned overnight politician who was member of the coalition government till he was convicted for fraud and jailed (His RSP party followers sprung him out of jail during the burst of anarchy in the Gen Z protests). But as astute watchers of Nepal’s politics such as Lok Raj Baral in ‘Nepal: From Monarchy to Republic’ observe, in the long duree of Nepal’s revolutionary and peoples’ movements, Nepal’s status quo Khas Arya (Brahmin-Chettri) dominated party leaders have repeatedly outmanoeuvred, splintered and co-opted the forces of progressive democratic change.

This was particularly so at the unique conjunctive moment of the decade end of the Maoists’ Peoples War :1996-2006, and the urban spontaneous popular peoples uprising, Jana Andolan II : April 2006. The Maoists’ countrywide revolutionary armed struggle shook the old monarchical order and fired peoples’ imagination about the possibility of an inclusive and equal Naya Nepal. The Maoists fused class ideology with identity politics and tapped into the discontents of the institutionally excluded ethnic and caste communities and women.

The rural socio-political ferment converged with the spontaneous urban popular peoples uprising against the constitutional monarch King Gyanendra’s seizure of absolute power. Jana Andolan II gave a democratic imprimatur to the demand for a systemic overhaul of the old unequal power structure.

Political consciousness and protests mobilised around marginalised and discriminated identities and in those heady days of euphoria following the 2006 Peace Agreement, a new inclusive democratic order seemed within reach. It seemed realised in Nepal’s most diverse and inclusive Constituent Assembly (CA) I (2008-2012), an elected body that rejigged the country’s political landscape with a surge in representation of janajatis (indigenous), Madhesis, Dalits and non-elite women.

Nepal demographically divides into three roughly equal population clusters –the dominant hill upper castes the Khas Arya the hill Dalits: 38% the hill janajatis: 27 % and the Madhesh plains social groups comprising of Madhes castes Dalits, Tharu (indigenous peoples), and Muslims: 32%.

The outmanoeuvring role of the tall leaders of the establishment ruling clique

However, the political neophytes proved to be no match against the machinations and split politics of the seasoned status quo upper caste political players within and outside the CA. Polarisation of constitution making process stymied CA I and paved the way for the return of the old exclusionary politics. CA II (2013-2015) was dominated by the return of the old status quo hill upper caste Khas Arya power elite. Krishna Hachhethu in ‘Nation Building and Federalism in Nepal ‘(2023) details the constitutional form that the struggle for social inclusion took which was identity based federalism and its defeat by territorial federalism.

The “why” of the unravelling of the social inclusion agenda of the Maoists, the splintering of the Madhesh groups, the taming of resurgent hill janajati activism, demands a complex de-layering. But there is no denying the outmanoeuvring role of the tall leaders of the establishment ruling clique of Nepali Congress and UML. They were joined by the Maoist leaders who traded ethnic federalism for a slice of power, and backed N/S axis of territorial federalism in compromising the restructuring a highly diverse social, ecological and geographical country.

It might be an object lesson to remember as the opportunity of a new dawn again is over the horizon. Listening to the Himal magazine podcast of Gen Z voices, what struck was their concern about erosion of federalism and secularism. It was evident in Tashi Lahzom's anxiety to draw in more and more indigenous youth into the Gen Z digital Discord plebiscite process, and Anjali Sah’s consciousness of alienation amidst Kathmandu Gen Z’s hill upper caste protestors and the need to mobilise separately madhes Gen Z groups.

Also, conspiracy theories of external involvement are arresting, especially given Nepal’s social geography and geo-political location. Nepali political commentators have reason to be watchful of the signalling of India’s political leadership. Displeasure communicated by the crisp ‘noting’ of Nepal’s adoption of the 2015 Constitution which compromised Madhes demands and fixed as ‘secular’ the orientation of the Nepali state.

Baral and Hachchetu argue that the Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar’s crisis visit before the hasty promulgation of the 2015 Constitution, (2015) failed to influence a federal restructuring favouring the Madhes demands. He was more successful in persuading the addition of a phrase that qualified Nepal’s ‘secular’ orientation, by adding the commitment to protect and promote sanatan dharma.

At this most recent transitional moment it may be significant to note the former foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon’s observation on Nepal’s changing politics, that India voiced support for ‘stability’, and shed the habitual phrase of in support of ‘democratic change’. Did the restoration of Hindu monarchy represent that ‘stability’?

Visiting Kathmandu in the wake of the gathering momentum of the pro-royalist public rallies, Nepali friends not only spoke of the mobilisation of cross border Hindutva actors, but their understanding of India’s strategic co-joining of a re-ascendant Hindu Nepal state and the BJP’s campaign for the Bihar assembly elections.

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