The Leaderless Fire: Nepal’s Gen Z Movement Cannot Be Hijacked
Kathmandu — Six weeks after Nepal’s youth toppled a government in 48 hours, the revolution faces its gravest threat: not from bullets or curfews, but from self-appointed saviors.
The Gen Z uprising that forced Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to resign, dissolved Parliament, and installed former Chief Justice Sushila Karki as interim leader was not led by any individual. It had no headquarters, no manifesto, no face on a poster. It lived in Discord servers, TikTok rants, and the raw anger of a generation watching “Nepo Kids” flaunt luxury while 20 percent of their peers remain jobless and millions flee abroad for survival.
Over 70 lives were lost. Buildings burned. Curfews choked Kathmandu. Yet in that chaos, a miracle emerged: a leaderless movement that cut across caste, class, and creed — from bankers in Baneshwor to farmers’ children in the Terai — united only by disgust at corruption and elite excess.
Today, that miracle is being gatekept.
Twelve so-called “Gen Z leaders” and 15 political operatives from the very parties the youth ousted now sit in closed-door meetings with Interim Prime Minister Karki at Bhadrakali Army Headquarters and Sheetal Niwas. They discuss election roadmaps and compensation — a paltry NPR 1 million for families of the slain, the legal cap — while the real protesters, the students from Karnali, the Maitighar sit-in warriors who demanded justice for 40 straight days, are barred from entering.
They chant outside locked gates. Their placards demand accountability for the 19 killed on the first day alone, for the arson, the lootings, the uninvestigated massacres. This is not dialogue. This is exclusion.
No one voted for these 12 “leaders” in the “Parliament of Nepal” Discord server where 7,586 users democratically backed Karki’s interim role. No one authorized them to speak for 145,000 voices. They represent factions — perhaps. They do not represent a generation.
Gen Z is not a monolith. We are environmentalists fighting Chure’s plunder, feminists rejecting nepo-fueled inequality, federalists from Madhesh demanding fair shares, and yes, even monarchists invoking Gyanendra’s shadow. To claim leadership is to erase this diversity, to funnel a kaleidoscope of agendas into one controllable voice.
History shows party-led uprisings collapse under ego and betrayal. Our strength is our facelessness. Our power is our refusal to be branded.
Names like Sudan Gurung of Hami Nepal or whispers of USAID-linked figures eyeing ministerial posts only deepen suspicion. This was never about foreign-backed color revolutions or restored thrones. It was about Nepal’s stolen sovereignty.
Interim PM Karki’s technocratic cabinet must deliver: open the corruption files, reform bureaucracy on merit, not loyalty, and compensate the wounded without caps. But more than policy, it must honor the movement’s soul — inclusivity without intermediaries.
To my fellow Gen Z: This fire is ours. Do not let it be doused by deal-makers or diluted by demagogues. Log back in. Flood the feeds. Remind the world — and those in power — that when Nepal’s youth rises, it rises as one, without crowns.
The revolution is leaderless. Long may it burn.
