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By Binod Dhakal

Nepal’s recent Gen Z protests were not simply an outburst of generational anger. They were the eruption of a long and festering delusion at the heart of the Nepali state. What unfolded in September 2025 was not a clash between government and citizens but between reality and illusion. The political class, insulated from the social body, operates as though the state were a coherent organism, while ordinary people inhabit a parallel world of unemployment, migration, and disillusion. The distance between these worlds has now become the most defining feature of Nepali politics.

The Nepali state, for decades, has lived in a condition of misrecognition. It believes itself to be a democracy, yet behaves as a closed oligarchy. It imagines its economy as self-sustaining, while depending almost entirely on the sweat of those who labor abroad. It praises inclusion and modernity, but its institutions are held captive by medieval patronage. This is not merely hypocrisy; it is a collective illusion that sustains a political order incapable of seeing itself as it truly is.

Recent figures from the Nepal Rastra Bank(central bank of Nepal) show remittance inflows surpassing all previous records. That money, earned by over a million Nepalis scattered around the world including the Gulf, Malaysia,Korea, Australia, Europe and US, now constitutes more than a quarter of Nepal’s GDP. It feeds the families of the working poor, funds urban consumption, and props up the illusion of stability. Yet remittance is also the mirror of failure. Every rupee that arrives is a silent reminder of a state that could not offer work or dignity at home. It is the lifeblood of the poor and the narcotic of the elite. It allows the government to postpone reform while claiming growth. The streets of Kathmandu gleam with imported cars bought from remittance money, while the villages that supply that labor empty of youth and hope.

Unemployment has become the central wound of Nepali society. The youth unemployment ratehovers far above regional averages, and even those counted as employed are trapped in informal, insecure work. A generation has grown up watching their elders toil abroad and their leaders squander opportunities at home. It is no wonder that the young no longer believe in institutions. The protests, though sparked by a single issue, were an indictment of decades of neglect, of a system that rewards loyalty over equity, and of an economy that excludes the very people it depends on.

The delusion is not confined to politicians. It pervades the entire architecture of power. The Nepal Army, constitutionally tasked with defending the nation, now operates as a corporate entity , investing in construction, hydropower, and housing. When a military becomes an economic stakeholder, it ceases to be a neutral guardian of sovereignty. It becomes a custodian of the status quo. The fusion of force and finance turns the army into both protector and profiteer, and in doing so, blurs the boundary between the public good and institutional greed.

The universities, once the seedbeds of critical thought, have collapsed into bureaucratic silence. Professors whisper, students migrate, and knowledge has been replaced by credentialism. Nepal has no living tradition of social critique; the intellectual class either serves political patrons or survives in exile. Without independent thought, politics becomes a theater of repetition. Each crisis is narrated as new, yet each ends the same. No lasting reform, no collective awakening, no shift in consciousness.

Journalism, too, has been hollowed out. The once vibrant press now trades in fear and obedience. Most outlets have become extensions of corporate or political patronage. The symbolic irony reached its height when almost all major Nepali portals uncritically cited a New York Times articlethat speculated about preplanned arson during the protests. Instead of investigating the conditions that led to public rage, they echoed foreign narratives as if validation must come from abroad. The incident revealed a profound epistemic crisis. The Nepali media, stripped of confidence, now depends on foreign authority to interpret its own reality. The national imagination itself has become outsourced.

The myth of development and stability

The philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis once wrote that every society is sustained by its imaginary institutions—those stories it tells itself to make sense of its existence. Nepal’s tragedy is that its stories no longer align with its lived reality. The political elite clings to the myth of development and stability, while the majority live through dislocation and despair. The collective imagination of the state remains trapped in a fantasy of progress even as its social fabric unravels.

This delusion expresses itself through ritual. Leaders inaugurate half-built bridges, cut ribbons for projects financed by debt, and praise their own success in speeches few believe. Bureaucrats and ministers perform governance as ceremony. The Parliament sits, debates, and adjourns, but the machinery beneath it no longer moves. It is not corruption alone that paralyzes the state; it is the deeper sickness of make-believe. Nepal acts out the gestures of democracy without embodying its spirit.

The absence of an intelligentsia intensifies this void. The state fears intellect because intellect threatens illusion. Critical voices are marginalized as radical or unpatriotic. Academics who question official narratives are silenced by institutional lethargy. Public discourse has been reduced to noise—tweets, slogans, and reactionary outbursts. In such a vacuum, protest becomes the only remaining language of truth. The streets are now the sole university where the young learn to articulate discontent.

But the tragedy of these protests lies in their ephemerality. They rise and vanish without transforming structures. The same police that repress today will guard tomorrow’s new cabinet. The same ministries that promise reform will bury reports. The cycle of anger and forgetting repeats because the system itself feeds on confusion. Every institution—political, military, academic, media—is entangled in the same web of self-deception. The collective psyche of the state has become incapable of self-recognition.

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu once said that domination is most effective when it is misrecognized as natural. In Nepal, inequality persists because it is experienced as fate, not injustice. The poor internalize deprivation as destiny, while the powerful justify privilege as competence. This is the ultimate delusion—the normalization of absurdity. When a state cannot distinguish exploitation from order, repression from discipline, or governance from spectacle, it ceases to be political in any meaningful sense.

The September Gen Z protests, then, were less a rebellion against authority and more a cry for recognition. They revealed not only anger at the rulers but also the absence of any believable alternative. The youth are not merely protesting unemployment; they are protesting unreality itself. Their revolt is ontological as much as political—a demand that the state wake from its dream.

Nepal lacks lucidity, not potential 

The lesson is not that Nepal lacks potential. It lacks lucidity. A delusional state cannot reform because reform requires the capacity to perceive truth. The first act of liberation, therefore, is epistemic: to see the nation as it is, not as it pretends to be. The political class must abandon its fictions of stability, the army its fiction of benevolence, the media its fiction of independence, and the citizens their fiction of helplessness. Only then can politics become a field of possibility rather than of performance.

Until that awakening, Nepal will remain trapped in its own dream. It will keep mistaking remittance for prosperity, migration for mobility, and repression for order. Its leaders will continue to speak of reform even as they reproduce decay. Its journalists will quote foreign voices because their own have gone mute. And its youth will continue to rise, burn, and disperse—haunting the streets of a state that no longer knows itself.

For now, the delusion remains intact. The lights of Kathmandu still glow, the speeches still echo, the ceremonies still proceed. But beneath that glitter lies a nation suspended between memory and amnesia, reality and fantasy. The Gen Z revolt has cracked the mirror. Whether Nepal dares to look into it is the only question that matters.

(The author is coordinator of Nepalnews.com English edition and can be reached at binoddhakal75@gmail.com)

While briefing Kathmandu-based diplomats, interim Prime Minister Karki failed to assure Nepal’s immediate neighbours

By Bhagirath Yogi

London – Singh Durbar, the seat of power in Nepal for more than a century, remains scorched.

A day after the September 8 Gen Z protests – in which 19 protesters were killed by security personnel in the capital Kathmandu and the eastern town of Itahari – several government buildings were set on fire, including Singh Durbar. As Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was forced to resign on September 9, unruly mobs, including those who had just escaped from the country’s prisons, set fire to many ministries within the Singh Durbar premises. 

Following negotiations facilitated by the Nepal Army, President Ram Chandra Paudel appointed former Chief Justice Sushila Karki as interim Prime Minister. He also dissolved Pratinidhi Sabha – the lower house of parliament –and set March 5, 2026, as the date for mid-term elections, based on the interim Prime Minister’s recommendations. 

Mrs. Karki’s tray is full. While preliminary estimates say Nepal might require millions of dollars to repair and reconstruct charred buildings, the morale of security forces, especially the Nepal Police, is low. Dozens of their offices have been burnt, weapons looted, and uniforms stolen. More than 5,000 inmates remain at large. Countries like the UAE have suspended issuing visas to Nepali citizens, fearing that criminals could take advantage of the situation and enter the country.

Though newly appointed Finance Minister RameshoreKhanal, a former Secretary at the same Ministry, announced that Nepal would mobilise its own domestic resources to conduct mid-term polls, the international community – including India, China, the EU, and the US – has expressed support to the new government. In return, they expected that the new interim administration would pursue the foreign policy of previous popularly elected governments.

While addressing a meeting of Kathmandu-based diplomats at the Foreign Ministry in Singh Durbar on Friday, Mrs. Karkisaid her government’s foreign policy continues to be guided by the Charter of the United Nations, non-alignment, principles of Panchsheel, international law, and norms of world peace. 

Mrs. Karki said that Nepal is proud to be the largest troop contributing country to UN peacekeeping operations, a modest but meaningful contribution to global peace.

She, however, did not mention anything regarding her government’s commitment to ensure that Nepal’s land is not used against her immediate neighbours.

Previous Nepali governments have repeatedly said that Nepal enjoys unique relations with India and is committed to a ‘One China’ policy, but Mrs. Karki was economical in her words and did not touch upon this sensitive topic.

It’s not immediately clear if  it was a tactical move on the part of the Prime Minister or a faux pas.

“Karki carefully avoided those traditional aspects to emphasize the interim nature of her government. With less than five months remaining in her tenure, she also aimed to demonstrate her full commitment to holding elections on March 5 as part of her sole mandate. This omission is not a rejection of Nepal’s longstanding diplomatic stance, and neither Delhi nor Beijing would view it as such,” said Sanjay Upadhya, a US-based political analyst.

Unlike in the past, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan religious leader who lives in exile in India, and other officials from his administration, congratulated Mrs. Karki publicly. Nepali officials say they have arrested a few demonstrators who allegedly took part in arson and vandalism during the September 8-9 protests in Kathmandu. Among them were youths wearing jackets with the sign ‘TOB’ printed on them. TOB stands for Tibetan Original Blood, social media posts claimed. While it may be too early to jump to a conclusion as investigations are underway, reports say Chinese officials are worried that pro-Tibet elements could take advantage of a fragile political and security situation in Nepal.

“At some level, inconvenient questions arose about the reason for this level of jubilation in Dharamshala. Then, visual images emerged showing pro-Tibet activists participating in protests in Kathmandu. This naturally heightened Nepali concerns that it would disturb the country’s carefully maintained geopolitical balance,” says Upadhya.

Recalling Ambassadors 

Amid geopolitical concerns, on Thursday (16 October), Mrs. Karki’s government decided to recall 11 ambassadors appointed by the previous Oli government. They included Nepal’s envoys to China, Germany, Israel, Malaysia, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan. They have been asked to return to Kathmandu by November 6.

Interestingly, six other ambassadors, including those to India and Australia whom the Oli government appointed, have not been recalled.

Such a selective decision by the interim government seems to have been motivated by the desire to show Gen Z leaders that the government is doing something. But, recalling ambassadors at such a critical juncture could do more harm than good, warn analysts.

“Nepal must assure both India and China that its actions are guided by national interests, not by non-state actors, and that it poses no security threat to either,” Dr. Hindu Sanskriti Karki, a scholar of international relations, told The Diplomat Nepal magazine.

As things stand, Friday’s meeting may turn out to be a missed opportunity for Prime Minister Karki, who also dons the mantle of Nepal’s Foreign Minister.

A former BBC journalist, Yogi is the editor of www.southasiatime.com

While it is essential to acknowledge the influence of foreign actors, it is equally crucial not to
dismiss the legitimate concerns of the populace as mere external interference

By Sanjay Upadhya
The massive protests spearheaded by Generation Z in Nepal earlier this month should have acted
as a catalyst for a comprehensive nationwide reflection on the nation’s political, social, and
economic trajectory. Instead, the conversation has been hijacked by a familiar narrative:
accusations of a ‘foreign hand’ fueling the unrest.
The interim government, formed in consultation with the protesters, has scheduled parliamentary
elections for March 5, 2026. Although it has only a limited mandate, the new administration has
taken tentative initiatives to foster public trust. However, the broader dialogue Nepal urgently
needs – about an overburdened political system, corruption and governance issues, and the
unfulfilled hopes of a whole generation – is at risk of being overshadowed by claims of external
conspiracies.

External Instigation
This is not a novel concept. The overthrow of the Rana oligarchy in 1951, the Maoist insurgency
from 1996 to 2006, the royal massacre of 2001, and the abolition of the monarchy in 2008, all
have at different times been linked to interference from neighboring states or international
powers. The notion of a ‘foreign hand’ has functioned both as a strategic instrument and as a
defensive mechanism, employed by those in authority to undermine their opponents and by
critics to depict themselves as victims of international conspiracies.
Nepal’s geographical position renders such suspicions comprehensible. Positioned between the
emerging powers of India and China, both of which are pursuing conflicting objectives, Nepal
has rarely enjoyed complete political insulation. India has extended support to political factions
opposing the monarchy and has implemented blockades amid diplomatic disagreements.
In 1989, New Delhi imposed a 13-month economic blockade following a trade and transit
dispute, severely harming Nepal’s economy and speeding up the decline of King Birendra’s
panchayat system. Again, in 2015, as Nepal adopted a new constitution, India carried out an
unofficial blockade – allegedly due to dissatisfaction from Madhesi groups – resulting in
shortages of fuel, medicines, and essential supplies. Many Nepalis saw this as punishment for
seeking greater independence.
Concurrently, China has discreetly augmented its influence via infrastructure initiatives, trade
agreements, security collaborations, and cultural exchanges. Nepal’s involvement in the Belt and
Road Initiative since 2017 has increased hopes for major connectivity projects. However, many
are still stalled due to funding talks and debt issues. Beijing’s focus on stability, especially
regarding Tibet, has also pressured Nepali authorities to limit Tibetan refugee activism,
sometimes at the cost of human rights.

Western nations also contribute through development assistance, advocating for democracy and
implementing policy reforms. The United States, Europe, and various international organizations
each exert influence on Nepal’s governance framework. The Millennium Challenge Corporation
agreement, ratified in 2022 after rigorous debate, has become contentious. Critics argue it serves
as a conduit for Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy. For the United States, Nepal aligns with its
comprehensive Indo-Pacific strategy, primarily focused on countering China’s increasing
influence.
In this complex geopolitical landscape, each wave of unrest fuels accusations of outside
interference. Some see the youth protests as India’s way of expressing frustration over Nepal’s
alleged tilt toward China. Others believe China is promoting nationalism to counter Indian
influence. Still others claim that the United States and its allies secretly support activists to push
Nepal closer to Western ideals and modes of governance.
However, these perspectives overlook a crucial aspect. External influences do not generate
fundamental discontent. The youth protesters in Nepal are predominantly motivated by domestic
concerns such as corruption, unemployment, inflation, the decline of education and healthcare,
and political apathy, rather than foreign conspiracies. Dismissing their initiatives as foreign
interference undermines their agency and unjustly shifts responsibility away from internal
leadership.
The narrative of the ‘foreign hand’ endures primarily due to its political convenience. Incumbent
governments frequently attribute issues to foreign interference to diminish critics, justify
crackdowns, and evade accountability. Opposition factions also employ this narrative to invoke
patriotic sentiments. This recurring pattern conceals genuine citizen grievances and undermines
confidence in democratic institutions.
Many continue to dismiss allegations of foreign interference in the recent unrest as paranoia.
They challenge critics to provide evidence, as if foreign intelligence agencies are known for
leaving their fingerprints. Clearly, external actors have engaged in Nepal’s internal affairs in
various forms. Historically, political groups have depended on foreign exile communities,
obtained campaign funding, or utilized diplomatic channels. Certain non-governmental
organizations and media outlets have faced allegations – substantiated or not – of advancing the
interests of foreign donors. Furthermore, the digital realm complicates matters through
clandestine disinformation campaigns that exacerbate social divisions.
The key point is not to deny the possibility of outside influence but to understand that such
influence grows in situations of weak governance. External actors take advantage of
vulnerabilities, but they are not the creators of the underlying structural weaknesses.
Nepal necessitates a nuanced and balanced strategy. It is imperative to safeguard sovereignty and
guard against unwarranted foreign influence, requiring ongoing vigilance. Concurrently, genuine
domestic issues should not be dismissed as foreign conspiracies. The most effective approach
involves a two-pronged strategy. First, internal institutions must be strengthened through anti-
corruption initiatives, employment creation, accountability measures, and reform. When citizens feel that their voices are heard and properly represented, they are less likely to see politics as a
puppet show controlled from abroad.

Second, developing political maturity is of paramount importance. Allegations of foreign
interference must be investigated impartially, rather than exploited for partisan advantage.
Leaders should refrain from turning every crisis into a nationalist rallying point.
Cost of Inaction Ultimately, the notion that a ‘foreign hand’ is orchestrating Nepal’s protests likely indicates leadership deficiencies rather than genuine external threats. For Nepali youths confronting
unemployment, inequality, and disillusionment, the primary adversary is not a clandestine
foreign entity but a dysfunctional political system that persistently fails.
If these systemic issues are not addressed, real or perceived foreign interference will continue to
be used as an excuse, allowing leaders to avoid accountability and jeopardizing Nepal’s
democratic development. The biggest threat is not just foreign influence but leaders who conceal
their failures behind such claims.

Sanjay Upadhya is a Nepali analyst based in the US. He has written a number of books
including Empowered and Imperilled: Nepal’s Peace Puzzle in Bits and Pieces; Nepal and
the Geo-Strategic Rivalry Between China and India; Backfire in Nepal: How India Lost the
Plot to China and The Raj Lives: India in Nepal.