In the 48 hours that Nepal’s Gen-Z revolution unfolded, one question echoed across the country: “Where is their Lenin?” But perhaps that question missed the point. For decades, every Nepali revolution has been undone not by its enemies but by those who claimed to lead it. This time, the absence of a single figurehead was not a weakness; it was the movement’s greatest strength.
When the protests subsided, one name began to circulate: Sudan Gurung, head of the youth-led organisation Hami Nepal. But Gurung did not lead the uprising; he emerged only after it was over, more as a spokesperson than a commander. His late prominence was proof of what made this revolt different. By refusing to anoint a leader, Nepal’s young protesters broke with a past where power was always concentrated in the hands of a few. They showed that change could emerge from the collective rather than the charismatic.
Yet the same revolution that reimagined leadership also revealed the enormous human cost of reclaiming power. In both human and economic terms, it was among the most destructive 48 hours in Nepal’s history. At least 74 people were killed and about 2,113 injured in the clashes. All three pillars of democracy – the parliament building, the Supreme Court and the Singha Durbar – were torched. The violence was not confined to the capital; at least 300 local government offices across the country were damaged. Even the fourth pillar of democracy, the media, came under attack, with the Kantipur Media House, Nepal’s largest private outlet, set ablaze. The economic damage has been estimated at up to three trillion Nepalese rupees (about $21bn), with preliminary government figures putting public infrastructure losses near one trillion, nearly half of Nepal’s annual gross domestic product.
By September 10, the state machinery had collapsed. The prime minister had resigned, parliament was in ruins, and the army was the only institution maintaining order. Amid this political vacuum, the revolution’s decentralised nature became even more visible. Protest organisers used the “Youths Against Corruption” Discord channel as an impromptu public square to decide on a path forward. The so-called “Discord Election” was chaotic, with thousands debating. One report described it as a “marathon session more befitting a Twitch stream”, with moderators struggling to manage a flood of opinions from users with anonymous handles and anime avatars. More than 7,500 people voted on the platform, ultimately selecting former Chief Justice Sushila Karki as their nominee for interim prime minister.
However, judging this revolution only by these events would be an injustice to history. The uprising was not planned; it was a reaction. We were simply high school and university students protesting. The massacre of 19 protesters, some still in their uniforms, on the first day transformed peaceful dissent into national fury. The symbols of a state that would kill its own children became the inevitable targets.
Now, the physical chaos has subsided. A new interim government with technocratic ministers has given Nepalis renewed hope. But that hope comes with a challenge: Will we fall into the old pattern of outsourcing power to leaders, or will we hold them to a new standard? For 48 hours, the people of Nepal believed that power resided with the public. This was not merely a belief; it was a truth the public stumbled upon through chaos.
Moving forward, the challenge for Nepalis, both Gen-Z and beyond, is to never forget the lessons of this revolution. History will not forget what happened on September 8 and 9, but we must also ask how and why it happened.
To understand this, we must view Nepal’s political history not as a series of isolated events but as a recurring pattern. The 2025 uprising did not emerge from nowhere; it was the latest eruption in a long cycle of revolt and betrayal. A Marxist analytical lens can help, not as ideology but as a framework. We can borrow the concepts of “base” and “superstructure” and adapt them politically. The “political base” can be understood as Nepal’s entrenched system of power, a network of patronage, corruption and governance that sustains the status quo. The “political superstructure” is the force that rises to challenge it, sometimes an organised party and others, in the case of Gen-Z, a decentralised public. This framework reveals a tragic cycle: In Nepal, every new superstructure that succeeds merely becomes the new base.
Consider 1951, when Nepal saw its first revolution of the century. From this lens, it was the political superstructure rising against the old autocratic base of the Rana regime. Figures like B P Koirala, King Tribhuvan and the five martyrs became the revolution’s heroes, but one cannot forget the roles of the exiled parties, the aspiring bourgeoisie and a rehabilitated monarchy. Hopes were high, and Koirala, especially, became the face of that hope, later becoming Nepal’s first democratically elected prime minister.
Those hopes, however, never crystallised. Barely a decade later, King Mahendra dissolved parliament, abolished the parties and introduced the Panchayat system, vesting sovereignty in the monarchy itself. While some glorify this era as a golden age, the discontent it produced led to the protests of 1980 and ultimately to the People’s Movement I in 1990, the second great revolution of modern Nepal.
That revolution, too, followed the familiar pattern. It restored multi-party democracy, again shifting the political base. Yet the democratic elite, composed of the same parties that had fought the Panchayat, failed to dismantle the underlying structures of patronage and feudalism. Instead, they became a new political base, perfecting a kleptocratic system that would lead the country into a bloody civil war. The Maoist insurgency, brewing for years before its first attack, marked another dark chapter.
Given its roots in communist theory, the Maoist movement, culminating in People’s Movement II, seems to fit this Marxist lens perfectly. But despite its ideological veneer, it too repeated Nepal’s tragic cycle. The Maoist elites did not replace the political base; they simply joined it. Commanders became ministers, presiding over the same corrupt systems they once denounced. They inherited the old networks of patronage, perpetuating the same kleptocracy and ignoring the economic contradictions at the heart of their revolution. The slogans changed, but the structures stayed the same.
In hindsight, the fatal flaw of all these revolutions lay in their leadership. Across the political spectrum, leaders became opportunists who sustained a kleptocratic regime disguised as democracy and branded as “People’s Movements”. The results never materialised for the people. In this light, the leaderlessness of Nepal’s recent Gen-Z revolution was not a weakness but its greatest strategic strength.
This historical trajectory shows that the Gen-Z revolution of 2025 was not a sudden outburst but the detonation of a bomb decades in the making. The social media ban was merely the spark. Each “failed” revolution added pressure on a political base blind to Nepal’s economic contradictions, and on a public that had long internalised the need for revolt.
The task before Nepal’s revolutionary youth now is clear: To dismantle, relentlessly and transparently, the cycle of betrayal by leadership itself. The goal is no longer to change who holds power but to change what power means. We must never again outsource hope, agency or critical thinking to any self-proclaimed saviour. The lesson of September is that our only hope is ourselves. It has always been ourselves – not the king, not the prime minister, not the president, not the mayor. We cannot allow another leader to hijack the people’s agency. Accountability must become part of Nepal’s civic DNA to ensure a vigilant, organised and awake citizenry. The days of September 8 and 9 will never be forgotten and must never be repeated. The power must remain where it was discovered: With the people.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.