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

Al Jazeera:

New Delhi, India — 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.

On Thursday, 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.