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Getting rid of the final remnants of a decadent political culture was unquestionably and unequivocally the greatest accomplishment of the GenZ movement (2025) in Nepal—at par with the abolishment of Rana rule in 1951, Panchayat in 1990, and the monarchy in 2006. Though triggered by a social media ban, the movement espoused anti-corruption as its primary agenda. This protest of GenZ youth (born 1997-2012) has irreversibly cemented the fate of three prominent Baby Boom Generation (born 1946-1964) leaders of Nepal, namely KP Sharma Oli, Sher Bahadur Deuba, and Puspa Kamal Dahal. Regrettably, GenZ’s historic uprising, being not a monolith, has been unmistakably hijacked by what appear to be mobs divorced completely from the national interest.

From protest to chaos

The dissatisfied, frustrated, and agitated GenZ generation movement unfolded peacefully in Kathmandu on Sept 8. The mood shifted as some protestors breached the restricted area close to parliament, climbing over the wall. Tension escalated, and clashes erupted following the protesters’ attempt to forcefully enter the parliament building and set fire to the gate. Against the mass antigovernment protests, the security forces responded with indiscriminate force, leaving 19 people dead by Sept 9.

The movement came to fruition with the resignation of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli by Tuesday afternoon. However, the feeling of triumph over his downfall was short-lived, as the protest descended into complete wreckage—unbridled anarchism. What started as a non-violent protest, “rooted in the principles of peaceful civic engagement,” against corruption soon spiraled into vandalism, violence, and arson attacks on government offices and buildings by the end of September 9. A wide array of private properties, including media outlets, supermarkets, banks, hotels, and whatnot, witnessed collateral damage. 

On three GenZ protesters’ accounts, the tens of thousands of followers on social media were warned of acting violently, irrespective of the death of 19 protesters on the first day. In a meeting with the Army chief, Ashok Raj Sigdel, on Tuesday evening, the GenZ protesters denied involvement in the pervasive arson attacks in the capital city. The protestors were left crestfallen and shocked by the scale of destruction. To them, the movement was hijacked by opportunists and co-opted by infiltrators. In fact, the hijackers took over, controlled, and steered the leaderless and disorganized movement into a direction of their interest—from instigation of violence on the first day to the widespread rampage on the second day.

The sight of smoke belching out of the burnt-out buildings, particularly Singh Durbar (Nepal’s central headquarters), the Supreme Court, and the House of Parliament in Kathmandu, left everyone utterly perplexed, appalled, and petrified. Who hijacked the GenZ protest and torched down the three government complexes or buildings of national significance—and why? Considering the analysis of social media posts, statements, and political commentaries—discourses on corruption—in the past 5 years, the destruction does not appear to be merely a result of youth’s impulse or performative rage.

From discourses to destruction

Pro-monarchy forces have struggled in their sporadic attempts to mobilize a huge mass against the system, despite their ardent efforts in the last 18/19 years. As luck would have it, Sept 8 afforded these elements an unorganized mass to exploit. The pro-monarchy protest that was miscarried in March 2025 with Durga Prasai’s arrest, opportunistically piggybacking on the GenZ movement, has reached its desired climax.

The House of Parliament (people’s representatives) reminds the pro-monarchy supporters of their old wounds and scars from the lost battle in 2006. It appears that their long-standing resentment and agitation finally found an outlet, expressed in Parliament House’s destruction. The renewed attacks (first attempt in March 2025) against its old nemesis—Nepal’s biggest media group, Kantipur, and Nepal’s largest supermarket retail chain, Bhatbhateni—suggest an extension of this wrath rooted in that unhealed wound. A narrative that Kantipur media shaped public opinion in favor of the republic and against the monarchy around 2006 has been pushed in recent years. The symbolic nature of the attacks implies the radical pro-monarchy forces have finally settled their scores with all these entities. 

Pull out the interviews or public speech videos by Durga Prasai, including far-right pro-monarchy opinion makers, published in the last five years. This new recruit in the pro-monarchy camp endlessly rattled, crafting a discourse formed through a progression of debatable assertions (Nepal Police are thieves, industrialists destroyed Nepal), incendiary rhetoric (bury the leaders, hang them on Damak tower), self-serving exaggerated claims (political leaders’ 10 Kharba money abroad), and ultimately, deliberate disinformation. Discourse targeting the symbols of “corruption”—major political parties or leaders, major media houses (Kantipur, Annapurna and Nagarik are blackmailers), and wealthy businessmen (Marwaris and Chaudhary Group) in Nepal. 

Enmeshed and implicated in the cooperative fraud or corruption case, Rabi Lamichhane’s (chairman of Rastriya Swotantra Party, RSP, and former home minister) multiple trials and subsequent guilty verdict likely have paved a path for a discourse of a failed judiciary system. Lamichhane’s endless trials served as a tipping point, particularly for his staunch followers. Social media analysis of Lamichhane’s supporters reveals a prevalent discourse of a ‘captured and corrupted justice system (the Supreme Court being the highest).’ Even though Lamichhane’s integrity has been questioned in Nepal’s cyberspace, the leaders close to three major political parties are equally perceived as corrupt. 

Furthermore, in this discourse the judicial system is framed as the puppet of three corrupted political parties. This discourse revolves around a delayed justice system, a party-dependent judiciary, unfair trials, biased and intransparent courts being selective, and political appointment of judges. A narrative that the parties or government ganged up to conspire against the public’s rising star (“innocent leader” victim of political revenge), like Lamichhane, and hounded him out with legal instruments. 

In the context of his wife being stopped by a traffic police officer, the mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), Balendra Shah, vented his anger on his official Facebook page. "It is okay for today, but if any vehicle of the KMC is stopped by traffic police in the future, I will set Singha Durbar ablaze. Mind it, thief government!” Did that statement in 2023, if not shaped, spark or seed a discourse implying a ‘corrupted Singha Durbar’ deserves to be burnt down? After all, his post was well-received (viral) by his thousands of well-wishers, a green signal to his aspiration, and a symbolic abetment by the public to act. A few months before his Facebook post, already in April 2023, over the garbage collection dispute, the mayor asked the government to move Singhadurbar to another city. 

The rising public faces (Prasai, Lamichhane, and Shah, to name a few) and their supporters, particularly in the last five years, played a catalytic role in the discursive formation of corruption. To be sure, social media apps such as TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram fueled the amplification and circulation of the discourse against state instruments. While spontaneous anger might explain some vandalism, the destruction of the Parliament House, Singha Durbar, and Supreme Court could be interpreted as a reflection of the discourses. Discourses shape and control the actions. Although reality is complex and it is tempting to assign blame on a single actor or faction, the infiltration of opportunistic groups targeting previously untouchable institutions aligns too closely with the popular discourses to be easily dismissed as mere coincidence.

End of history

The GenZ movement deserved to be remembered as a youth-led successful anti-corruption movement—not a tragic example of winning at enormous cost. Thus, it is a clarion call to the mainstream organic GenZ movement to reclaim their narrative of ‘hijacked,’ officially announcing its non-involvement or non-association with the hijackers’ abysmal destructive actions that were not in favor of national interest. Ignoring the smear campaign against the movement, the international community should extend moral and financial support in the upcoming days to rebuild Nepal. If Francis Fukuyama marked 1990 as the end of history with the victory of liberal democracy, perhaps 2025 could be seen as Nepal’s own ‘end of history’—the end of decadent politics and the dawn of youth-driven governance.

The ripples of the Trump administration's decision to freeze USAID under the pretext of misuse and abuse have caused turmoil across the world. As US government officials proclaimed on multiple occasions, “USAID funded an atheism expansion project in Nepal,” narratives colored with religious conversion and secularism are snowballing across Nepal. There is extraordinarily more to the funding debacle than meets the eye.

Originally for religious freedom

In 2021, the United States Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for ‘DRL FY20 IRF Promoting and Defending Religious Freedom Inclusive of Atheist, Humanist, Non-Practicing, and Non-Affiliated Individuals’. The amount of $500,000 would be awarded to projects that support religious freedom in two or three countries in the regions of South/Central Asia and the Middle East/North Africa. An overview of expected outcomes from the projects: increased availability of mechanisms for atheists and nonbelievers; increased capacity among members of atheists; increased awareness of religious pluralism. In principle, DRL presupposes these groups experience discrimination, abuses and harassment.

Because it was an open competition award, any country from the two specified regions was entitled to apply. Perusal of the NOFO details as spelled out by the State Department does not suggest “expansion” of atheism per se. Linda Qiu ingeniously called out the misleading statement by speaker Mike Johnson, “$100m on initiatives like expanding atheism in Nepal”. It was Brian Mast (Republican Congressman) who first brought Nepal’s issue to Congress hearing in March 2024 and February 2025, subsequently in an interview, and repeatedly framed the ‘religious freedom’ grant along the lines of ‘promotion or expansion of atheism’. In this particular context, authority bias was apparent—because high-ranking officials said it, it must be true. Qiu has debunked it with fact-checking; the half a million dollars in funding was the initiative of the State Department, not the USAID.

Misplaced funding

The Humanist International (HI) group secured the award of $500,000 and in the documents obtained by lawmakers in the US, it was discovered that the group intended to use the funding in Sri Lanka and Nepal. Michael T McCaul (chairman of the US Foreign Affairs) has expressed deep concern and dissatisfaction over the funding, as it is against the US Constitution to promote any religious ideology overseas. It is profoundly insulting for him that the State Department decided to entrust HI, whose CEO pushes for anti-Catholic agendas—an organization with anti-religious objectives. Whereas McCaul accuses the department of exercising their creativity in the name of religious freedom and criticizes one key project implementer for keeping details a secret, the department blames the HI for being untruthful.

Of course, the atheism project that Hl designed to implement in Nepal is at odds with the religious freedom project that the State Department envisioned to fund. To be sure, such a discrepancy is a result of the department’s failure to do due diligence. Was this a case of organizational corruption or what MaCaul calls a blatant favoritism on the part of the department? In any case, the State Department should be accountable, more than anyone else, for the administrative lapses and its impractically misplaced project. Because of such a laxity, the already-present preconceived notion or Hindutva propaganda is being reinforced: behind the introduction of secularism in Nepal was international development aid from the US and other Western powers.

Anti-secularists unleashed

The USAID fiasco and atheism grant have activated anti-secular forces in Nepal. Despite the assurance of Dean R Thomson, US ambassador to Nepal, last March 2024, the chairman of Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), Rajendra Lingden, harped on the ‘atheism funding’ issue in one of the latest parliament sessions in February 2025. He unabashedly misled the parliament by conflating atheism, religious conversion and secularism. It was indisputably a well-colluded or calculated move to obscure the issue and undermine secularism. Not surprisingly, another member of RPP, Gyanendra Shahi, in one press meet, echoed the claims of Lingden verbatim, as all the pro-Hindu kingdom forces are predisposed to.

The end of the Hindu kingdom must have been such a huge blow to the RPP and its supporters that it has severely or interminably affected their ears. Any debate, utterances or conversations on secularism fell in their impaired ears, it is translated into religious conversion; hard of hearing, lately they translated atheism into secularism and religious conversion. It is high time the rankled anti-secularists learn that atheism, secularism and religious conversion are conceptually disparate regardless of religion being an overlapping element in them.

Neither the State Department NOFO document nor US officials (Brian Mast, Mike Johnson, and others) spelled out the term ‘secularism’ or ‘religious conversion.’ Seeking to prove that external powers (USA) funded religious conversion and secularism is an expedient method at anti-secularists’ disposal to weaken the legitimacy of secularism in Nepal. Little do they realize that this project of atheism was part of the Biden administration (2020-2024), and Nepal cemented its secular identity in 2007 and subsequently in 2015. To reinvigorate the preexisting narrative, the atheism grant example is being invoked or exploited so that the national sentiments against secularism are fueled. Social media platforms are rife with conversations or comments that attempt to render objectivity to such misleading narratives.

On social media platforms, the legendary comedians, the duo of Madan Krishna Shrestha and Hari Bansha Acharya, have been subjected to witch-hunting over atheism allegations, especially by anti-secularists. Because of recourse to a retroactive judgment mode, telefilms or plays they produced decades ago are under scrutiny as if USAID funded them for religion or atheism projects. Fueled by misleading information, some critics, keyboard warriors and social media mobs have ganged up against the duo by blatantly ignoring the nuances of USAID’s grant provided to the few projects throughout their careers. In addition to the duo comedians, Krishna Dharabasi, Kunda Dixit, Amar Neupane and Khagendra Sangraula, among others, are not only facing backlash with vitriolic comments—ad hominem attacks—from cyber warriors, but they are also on the verge of becoming victims of what is called the ‘cancel culture’.

Atheism deserves protection

McCaul laments and criticizes the State Department for not funding any project that tackles persecution of Christian and Muslim minorities in South Asia while spending taxpayers’ money for atheist/humanist programs inconsistent with US law. If a project that ensures freedom of atheists translates into an ideologically charged endeavor, how do supporting Christians and Muslims transcend the similar allegations? Ample evidence from countries has emerged where atheists are targeted; non-religious people are ostracized in India, Colombia, and the Philippines, while atheists and non-believers are imposed death penalties in Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan and the UAE. Thus, should Nepali atheists in the future be victims of such mistreatment, then it definitely calls for intervention in terms of funding from USAID, the State Department or other agencies.