Images of the burning Nepalese parliament were shared around the world. Videos show demonstrators beating up the chairman of the Nepalese Congress Party and his wife, the acting foreign minister; demonstrators on barricades waved the Jolly Roger flag. After images of mass protests in Indonesia circled the globe, Nepal is now following suit.
While Western media are trying to romanticise the unrest as a ‘Gen Z protest’ against the social media ban, this is not just an oversimplification—it is a deliberate misrepresentation. Those who set fire to government buildings and the homes of the rich are not fighting for the right to doomscroll on social media, but against an entire system of corruption and inequality. The question is: how can the protesters win? Before we answer this question, let’s take a look at the course and background of the uprising.
How the uprising developed
In less than a week the situation escalated dramatically:
Thursday 4 September: The Nepalese government announced a ban on 26 social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat. This was followed shortly afterwards by a nationwide power cut. Officially the companies had refused to submit to state control.
The ban did not come as a complete surprise. Back in September 2024, Nepal’s Supreme Court had ordered all platforms to register so that the state could monitor ‘undesirable content’. On 28 August, the ministry finally issued an ultimatum: register within seven days or be shut down. Some companies, such as TikTok and Viber, complied but others refused. So, on 4 September the 26 were blocked in one fell swoop.
Critics, however, see another trigger. In the weeks leading up to this, TikTok videos had exposed the ‘Nepo babies’ of the political elite—sons and daughters of ministers who boasted about their luxury cars and villas in a country where the average annual income is $1,400.
Monday 8 September: Tens of thousands took to the streets in Kathmandu, mainly at the Maitighar Mandala monument in the city centre and around the parliament in New Baneshwor. Originally organised as a peaceful rally by Anil Baniya of the NGO Hami Nepal, among others, the situation escalated when a protester hit a surveillance camera with a stone. The regime’s response: live ammunition. The toll for the day: at least 19 dead, 347 injured. Some of the protesters who were hit were schoolchildren in their school uniforms.
Baniya later spoke of external forces and ruling party cadres ‘hijacking’ the protests—but even if that were true, it does not justify the brutal crackdown. The bullets turned a demonstration into a massacre.
In the evening the government tried to calm the situation. The social media ban was lifted; Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak resigned; curfews were imposed. But it was too late—the movement was already demanding the fall of the government.
Tuesday, 9 September: The protests continued. Young people disregarded curfews and gathered around the parliament building. Communications Minister Prithvi Subba Gurung’s house was set on fire early on Tuesday morning.
Also engulfed in smoke were the official presidential palace, the prime minister’s residence, the private homes of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, the interior minister, and the leader of the opposition Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre). The party headquarters of the Communist Party United Marxist-Leninists (KPN-VML) was also attacked.
KP Sharma Oli resigned, and several ministers and members of parliament also stepped down. That night, the Nepalese army announced that it would take ‘control’ to ensure ‘law and order’. At the same time the military invited protesters to peace talks. According to a BBC correspondent student leaders were working on an updated list of demands.
Since then, the army has taken over and is attempting to regain control through a combination of offers of incorporation (e.g. student representatives) and repression.
What led up to this?
Since the fall of the monarchy 17 years ago, Nepal has seen 13 different governments. Political instability, corruption and economic stagnation have become the norm.
In the 2022 parliamentary elections, the three communist parties—the KPN-VML, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre; KPN-MC) and the Communist Party of Nepal (United Socialists)—together won almost 44 per cent of the seats and 40 per cent of the votes. But since these elections, there have been four different coalitions in 19 months. At the time of the protests, the KPN-VML and the Nepali Congress Party were in office.
An entire generation of activists has grown up in political instability. Youth unemployment stands at around 20%. Every day, around 2,000 young Nepalese leave the country to work in the Gulf States or Southeast Asia. Between 2008 and 2022 more than 4.7 million new work permits were issued. Officially, one million Nepalese work in India, but most agree that the actual number is higher. It is estimated that around 6 million people (32% of the working-age population) are employed abroad.
The majority of Nepal’s population live in rural areas and 62% of the labour force work in agriculture, which accounts for almost a quarter of GDP. Just under 17% are employed in industry, but its share of GDP is only 13 per cent, while the service sector accounts for 52% of GDP and 20.5% of employees.
Massive emigration from the country reflects Nepal’s dependence on imperialist finance capital. The country’s division between the influence of Indian, Western and Chinese capitalism forms the backdrop to the country’s ongoing social and political crisis.
Crisis of leadership
However, the movement is also suffering from a deep crisis of leadership. The policies of Nepal’s communist parties are not part of the solution, but part of the problem. The pro-capitalist programme of the Maoist parties is also reflected in the current protests. Bourgeois or even royalist ‘oppositionists’ are now also trying to position themselves to take advantage of the discontent.
On the one hand, there is a chance that former King Gyanendra could gain momentum from the royalist side, which has opposed the Marxist-allied governments since the civil war. In the past, he was presented as a ‘symbol of resistance’ for all those disappointed with the current political system. At the beginning of the year, several thousand monarchists demonstrated for restoration. These protests were crushed, with at least two deaths.
The Kathmandu district administration imposed a two-month ban on protests in central government districts. According to the order, public gatherings of more than five people—including hunger strikes, demonstrations, protests and rallies—were prohibited. At the same time, talk about the return of the King has mounted.
On the other side is Balendra Shah, the independent mayor of Kathmandu. While Al Jazeera describes him as the face of the protest movement, the Times of India speculated that he could run for prime minister, either as an independent candidate or through the National Independence Party (RSP).
These two tendencies are only examples and serve to demonstrate that mass protests such as these rarely have a homogeneous character and that it is still unclear which forces will prevail. This raises the question: how can the fight against corruption be won?
Lessons from the past
So far, many of the demands of Nepal’s protest movement have not reached the international press or social media. Nevertheless it is clear that if you really want to fight corruption, you have to go beyond symbolic actions; isolated demands are not enough.
It is worth learning from the past. In 2024, students in Bangladesh stormed the Congress to fight corruption. But what remains of the uprising? The head of government was driven out of the country, power was taken over by a transitional government, and former activists were integrated into the apparatus. Now they too have to defend themselves against allegations of corruption. This shows that demands that do not aim at systematic control of power end in subordination to bourgeois structures.
The Maoists in Nepal also demonstrate this danger. They won the civil war in 2006 (not primarily because of guerrilla warfare, but also because of massive uprisings among the urban population). But from the outset, they refused to establish a workers’ and peasants’ government, arguing that Nepal was not yet ready for such a government and first had to undergo ‘democratic’, ‘anti-imperialist’ (especially anti-Indian) capitalist development.
Consequently, they joined a bourgeois government (initially still formally under the monarchy). Land reforms were postponed; large landholdings remained intact. The capitalist economy was left untouched, with the argument that the first step was to raise the living standards of the impoverished masses through an intermediate capitalist ‘stage’.
The policy of the KPN-Maoist Centre is thus a classic example of the compatibility of an armed, petty bourgeois struggle with reformist parliamentarianism. Within a few months the party switched in 2006 from partisan struggle to a government coalition with openly bourgeois parties.
Both examples illustrate that corruption cannot be stopped by appeals or selective actions—as well as the impossibility of developing genuine ‘democracy’ within a national framework and while maintaining the capitalist economy. The theory of separate stages only serves the management of capitalist misery.
For years, the various ‘communist’ parties in Nepal have been integrated into the state apparatus, closely linked to businesses and land ownership. Many have themselves risen into the propertied class in the market economy they themselves advocate. For example, the Nepalese Communist Party, which emerged in 2018 from a merger of the KPN-VML and KPN-MZ and formed the government, emphasised that the private sector was the ‘engine of growth’ for the country and must be promoted accordingly.
Limiting oneself to abstract democratic demands that are directed ‘into the void’, that is, without specifying that it should be the workers and farmers who implement the demands and link them to the struggle against capitalism, ultimately leads to subordination to bourgeois forces. Anyone who wants to fight corruption successfully must tackle the problem at its root: attack the power of the elites, name the structures of control and challenge the imperialist system as a whole. At the same time, it is clear that the liberation of Nepal cannot be achieved in isolation at the national level—it requires solidarity and perspectives in the international struggle against exploitation and imperialism. But what does that mean in practice?
Permanent revolution
The task of revolutionaries is to argue within the movement for strict independence from bourgeois parties—and to fight for a revolutionary programme with a proletarian class standpoint that can meet the most urgent needs of workers, peasants, the lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie and students.
Action committees are needed in working class districts and in the countryside to discuss current events and defend against arrests by the army. Otherwise there is a risk of the movement becoming fragmented due to differing class interests, allowing bourgeois or petty bourgeois forces to take over the leadership of the movement, or of ‘pacification’ by the military—extinguishing the fire that brought ‘Generation Z’ onto the streets.
That is why the question of building one’s own structures and self-defence committees, rooted in the working class and among peasants, is so important. The actions of the military in particular raise this question.
The initiative of the ‘Independent Marxists,’ which founded the ‘Safal Workers’ Street Committee’ to defend themselves protesters against state violence, proves this is possible. They demand the arrest of former ministers, disarmament of the state, expropriation of property owners, arming of the population, dissolution of parliament and elections to workers’ assemblies.
These demands have to be combined with important and urgent demands against large landowners and mass unemployment. But this will not happen overnight. To fight for this perspective, it is necessary to build a revolutionary working class party, equipped with a programme of action to complete the revolution by overthrowing capitalism and establishing a workers’ and peasants’ government based on councils of workers, soldiers and peasants, defended by an armed militia.
Such a government would have to address the immediate needs of the masses by introducing an emergency programme against inflation and poverty, financed by the expropriation of the rich, the financial sector and big capital, in order to establish a democratically planned economy.
The uprising in Kathmandu in April 2006, like the current protests, showed that even in countries with a numerically small proletariat, the urban masses can come to the fore during the revolution. Both show that a real socialist revolution is possible. It is the task of revolutionaries to fight for a programme of permanent revolution that combines immediate and democratic demands with those that point the way to socialism, for example through workers’ and peasants’ control.
The principle of such a programme is also clear; lasting liberation is only possible if it happens internationally. Socialism in one country is not possible, so it must be linked to the building of an international workers’ movement, and a new, Fifth International.
