Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka: Is South Asia fertile for Gen Z revolutions?

By Yashraj Sharma

The contexts and triggers were different, but analysts say there’s a common thread tying South Asia’s youth revolts — and that protesters have learned from each other

NEW DELHI — The rattle of iron gates sounded like drumbeats as the crowd surged forward. A sea of bodies stormed through the barricades, which had stood as sentinels of power barely hours ago.

The hallways of the house of the country’s leader echoed with the thunder of muddy footsteps. Some smashed windows and artefacts, others picked up luxury bedsheets or shoes.

The building and its plush interiors had been symbols of crushing authority, impenetrable and out of reach for the country’s teeming millions. Now, however, they briefly belonged to the people.

This was Nepal last week. It was also Sri Lanka in 2022, and Bangladesh in 2024.

As Nepal, a country of 30 million people sandwiched between India and China, now plots its future in ways alien to traditional electoral democracies, the spate of youth-led protest movements that have toppled governments one after the other in South Asia has also sparked a broader question: Is the world’s most densely populated region Ground Zero for Gen Z revolutions?

“It’s certainly very striking. There’s this kind of new politics of instability,” said Paul Staniland, an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, whose research focuses on political violence and international security in South Asia.

Last Thursday (11), some 10,000 Nepali youth, including many in the diaspora, voted for an interim prime minister not through physical or electoral ballots, but through an online poll on Discord, a platform primarily used by gamers. Nepal, where three days of protests against corruption and nepotism turned violent, with a crackdown by security forces leading to the death of more than 70 people, has announced new elections in March.

But the protests, which forced Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to resign days after he had mocked the Gen Z origins of the agitators, have already shown that in nation after nation in South Asia, increasingly frustrated young people are grabbing power and declaring themselves boss when they feel betrayed by political systems out of tune with their demands.

This is a dramatic shift for South Asia, a region that has long been home to major political protests, but rarely ones where regimes are overthrown, Staniland told Al Jazeera. “This is a very different kind of orientation from a world that has military coups, or the main form of political conflict is something else,” he added, referring to the ways political crises in the region have previously often played out.

Each of the protest movements – in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal – was rooted in specific histories and was triggered by events unique to that country. Yet, analysts say, there is a common thread that runs through the rage that exploded in these countries: a generation that is refusing to live with broken promises, and the factors driving them.

These movements, experts say, also appear to be learning from each other.

From Colombo to Dhaka to Kathmandu: The backdrop

The Gen-Z protests in Kathmandu kicked off after the government banned social media platforms, citing misuse and the failure of the platforms to register with regulators. But the grievances ran much deeper: inequality, corruption and nepotism were the major triggers for young people in a country where remittances sent home by Nepalis abroad represent a third of the nation’s economy.

Thousands of teenagers hit the streets, many still in school uniforms. More than 70 people were shot dead, and hundreds more were injured.

But the violence unleashed on protesters by security forces only aggravated the crisis. Some demonstrators torched the parliament, while others set the houses of other political parties, some leaders, and even Nepal’s largest media house on fire. Protesters also broke into Oli’s house, ransacking it.

Oli resigned a day later.

It was very different in Bangladesh in 2024. There, it began with a student-led campaign against discriminatory job quotas. But by the summer, after a series of police crackdowns on mostly peaceful protesters killed hundreds of civilians, the movement’s character shifted to a broad coalition demanding an end to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s long hardline government.

Protests had a loose leadership structure: student leaders issued ultimatums and lists of demands to the government, and opposition figures provided support. Everything Hanisa’s government did – from brutal assaults on student agitators to telecommunications blackouts – only aggravated the crisis. Ultimately, on August 5, 2024, the prime minister quit, escaping to close ally India by helicopter.

Two years before the upheaval in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka had its own moment. There, the protests were a response to an economic collapse as Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt. By March 2022, daily life had become dire: 12-hour power blackouts, miles-long queues for fuel and cooking gas, and inflation above 50%.

Sri Lanka’s ‘Aragalaya’ movement, which stands for ‘The Struggle’ in Sinhala, was born. Youth activists set up a protest camp they called ‘GotaGoGama’ (‘Gotta Go Village’), in front of Colombo’s Presidential Secretariat. It was a reference to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose family had governed the country for 15 of the previous 18 years. The site became a hub of rallies, art performances and speeches.

In mid-July, Rajapaksa fled the country after his residence was overrun by demonstrators.

‘Dissonance was too high’

To Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, the overthrow of powerful governments by youth-led movements in the three countries has common foundations: unaddressed socioeconomic disparities and corruption by an entrenched political elite that left them disconnected from the challenges of younger generations.

Many in Gen Z have experienced two economic recessions in their lifetimes: in 2008-09 and then in the wake of COVID-19. Ganguly said that the generation had also two formative years in isolation, cut off from their peers physically, though those pandemic years also amplified their use of digital platforms to unprecedented levels.

All of this happened while they were increasingly being governed by leaders of their grandparents’ age. When these governments were toppled, Nepal’s Oli was 73, Bangladesh’s Hasina was 76, and Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa was 74.

“The youth in South Asia is not able to find anything to connect them to their political leaders,” said Ganguly. “The dissonance was too high.” And that sort of gap in discrepancies between their lives, and that of the politicians and their children, has driven the anger, she added.

This is the reason why protests against nepotism – which took the form of the #NepoKid social media trend in Indonesia, which has also witnessed mass agitations in recent weeks – also resonated in Nepal, say experts.

The most common theme between the youth-led movements in South Asia, said Staniland, was the ability to imagine a better political and economic future, and see the gap between what they aspire to, and the reality.

“Their strengths are these forward-looking set of desires and grievances, and a sense of connection,” Staniland told Al Jazeera.

These countries also have overlapping demographic factors: Nearly 50% of the population in all three countries is below 28. Their per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is much lower than the global average, but the literacy rate is more than 70%.

Experts say that the socioeconomic emphasis of the movements, rather than one based on secessionist demands or grievances of any one minority, helped them appeal to wider audiences across their countries.

“When these governments are faced with protest, they don’t have that many levers to fall back on, especially amid an unequal [society] or slowing down of economic growth,” said Staniland.

Gen Z edge

Rumela Sen, faculty director of the master’s in international affairs programme at Columbia University, told Al Jazeera that if one looks beyond the visuals of rage emerging from these countries’ protests, “there is a very democratic, sincere aspiration for political inclusion, economic justice, and holding their elected representatives accountable”.

With a young demography, and both access and savvy when it comes to the internet, Sen said, South Asia’s Gen Z has managed to leverage digital platforms “effortlessly for community, organisation and self-expression”.

Blocking internet access, or specific platforms, has only backfired on governments.

In Nepal, the Gen Z protesters just “did not want to un-see [the #NepoKids’] lavish lifestyles [and] foreign education that was built on the dead bodies of their future,” said Sen.

“There is something authentic about this generational framing – the moral outrage of the youth against a generation that is stealing their future,” she added .

“The slogans about fairness, future, jobs, combined with the tech savviness, are giving these movements an edge over the traditional elites.”

Are they learning from each other?

Jeevan Sharma, a political anthropologist on South Asia, who is currently in Kathmandu for research, said that these protest movements have learned from each other, as well as from other youth-led global protests, like in Indonesia and the Philippines.

“Nepali youth have been closely witnessing and following the movements in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,” he said, adding that the Gen Z-led political movement has not appeared in isolation, but out of deep-seated disillusionment in the country’s political leadership.

Staniland agreed. “Certainly, these movements are watching and learning and being inspired by one another.”

Sen of Columbia University, whose research focuses on civil conflict and rebel governance in South Asia, said that the protest tactics used in Nepal and other regional countries – including hashtag campaigns on social media and decentralised organising – represent an emerging playbook of digital protest.

The only question is: Where will these protests erupt next?

-This article was originally featured on aljazeera.com