Hashtag Havoc in Nepal

Just like in Bangladesh, we witness the same pattern in Nepal. Unwise groups of youth, armed with social media channels and a distorted sense of justice, have manipulated the sentiments of entire communities, transforming moral outrage into instruments of disorder.

- BY NILANTHA ILANGAMUWA

At the conclusion of Bangladesh's upheavals, the country found Muhammad Yunus and a semblance of reconstruction. Nepal, in its own chaotic moment, now looks to a 'messiah' in former Chief Justice Sushila Karki. The so-called 'Gen-Z Movement,' which emerged after days of violent protests and consultations with the Chief of Army Staff, recommended Karki to lead the interim government. Their initial agenda includes the dissolution of Parliament, the formation of an interim administration, and comprehensive revisions to the decade-old Constitution. Representatives of the movement emphasised that her name had been proposed through online votes within their networks, a mechanism that, in its ambition, perfectly captures the illusion of participatory democracy in the digital era, even as it dangerously divorces decision-making from political prudence.

The images that emerged from the streets of Kathmandu are seared into memory: former Prime Ministers stripped and paraded, political leaders' residences set ablaze, and government buildings reduced to ruins. The ostensible trigger—a fleeting ban on social media platforms—quickly morphed into a grotesque pageant of street vengeance. Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar, wife of former Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal, sustained severe burns when protesters set her house alight. Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife were beaten before cameras, and the nation witnessed the unfolding mayhem in real time via Instagram and X. The protests, led by Generation Z, began ostensibly as a campaign against corruption and social media restrictions but soon escalated into unmediated retribution, public humiliation, and mob rule. Moral fury, amplified through social media, cannot substitute for governance or revolutionary action; it generates chaos, raw and untempered.