The View From India newsletter: Nepal, uprising and uncertainty Today World News

(This article is part of the View From India newsletter curated by The Hindu’s foreign affairs experts. To get the newsletter in your inbox every Monday, subscribe here.)

The mass protests and violence witnessed in Nepal last week is the latest, emphatic reminder to a ruling political establishment in South Asia, that its cumulative failure to improve the ordinary citizen’s life will not be tolerated any longer. For many in the region and beyond, it brought back memories of Sri Lanka’s “Janatha Aragalaya” [people’s struggle] that booted out President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022, and Bangladesh’s “July revolution” last year, that forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country.

The upheaval that swept Nepal on September 9, 2025, with protesters torching Parliament, the Supreme Court, political residences, and media offices while releasing prisoners, cannot be dismissed as a natural reaction to the previous day’s crackdown that killed 19 young demonstrators, The Hindu editorial noted, terming it “violent nihilism” that threatened the country’s hard-won democratic gains. Nepal’s Health Ministry has put the death toll from last week’s unrest to 72, as search teams recover bodies from government offices, houses and other buildings set on fire.

The Nepali government’s ban social media, a crucial link for workers abroad and pumping in remittance money into the country’s economy, may appear the immediate trigger for the protests, but the rage and desperation, expressed by the youth held a deeper message. As The Hindu’s editorial put it, the “Gen Z protests” were born out of frustration with Nepal’s “chronic political dysfunction.” Entrenched corruption, nepotism, and mounting economic hardship became a widely shared reality facing ordinary people. When institutions and mechanisms in liberal democracies are unable to resolve this systemic failure of the political class, and when so-called alternatives are hardly different, disillusioned youth seem to be left with little choice but to take to the streets to eject their rulers, no matter what.

Headless movements, which mobilise diverse actors, often display incredible clarity on what they don’t want or reject, but they are rarely clear-eyed about what comes, or ought to come, after. All the same, any reading of such protests or their outcomes, that disregards the specific histories, context, and factors that drove the movement in the first place, will be incomplete and unhelpful. Every uprising will be judged by history, for its ability to meet its immediate objectives, as well as its larger political outcome.

With the backing of Gen Z campaigners, Supreme Court Chief Justice Sushila Karki has been appointed Nepal’s interim Prime Minister. “The biggest task on her shoulders is to conduct free and fair elections to restore the democratic and constitutional process and give back Parliament its inherent right to pick the Prime Minister,” writes Sanjeev Satgainya, in this profile of Nepal’s new leader, ‘From the Bench to the helm’. Satgainya also brought us valuable ground reportage through last week.

In addition to daily news updates, The Hindu featured explainers and analysis to give us more perspective. “The flames that consumed Kathmandu’s government buildings on Tuesday illuminated more than just the immediate crisis in Nepal…the violence revealed the deep structural failures of Nepal’s democratic experiment and has raised troubling questions about its political future,” wrote Srinivasan Ramani, who has been tracking Nepal for long. Also read Ramani’s explainer on how Gen Z forced changes in Nepal, and what are the challenges that loom.

IN FOCUS PODCAST: As Nepal navigates an uncertain political terrain, will the old guard step aside? Anupama Chandrasekaran speaks to Roman Gautam, Editor, Himal Southasian to better appreciate the dynamics at play at this crucial moment. As Gautam wrote in his analysis for the magazine: “Nothing that comes next will be easy.”

WORLDVIEW: Should India worry? Suhasini Haidar breaks down the implications of the Nepal upheaval for New Delhi.

Top 5 stories this week:

1. Reckless escalation: The Hindu editorial on Israel’s attack on Qatar

2. Charlie Kirk | Death of a culture crusader, by G. Sampath

3. The way forward on Katchatheevu, Palk Strait disputes, by Dr. Nirmala Chandrahasan

4. M.K. Narayanan on Positioning India in an unruly world

5. Indian academia in times of genocide by Alok Laddha and Suvrat Raju

Published – September 15, 2025 02:03 pm IST