New Delhi: Sushila Karki, Nepal's first female PM, steers return to polls after Gen-Z revolt: From discord to Discord, and beyond
The images were seared into the world’s memory in just 72 hours, with both fear and awe at what was happening in Nepal in September 2025. The parliament building in Kathmandu was set on fire. The Prime Minister’s residence was looted and set alight. Military helicopters were seen evacuating ministers from besieged homes.
All this ignited, in the immediate, by a ban on Instagram; though years of popular dissatisfaction with entrenched elites was the fuel. The protesters were mostly from ‘Generation Z’, a pop-culture name for those barely 30 or younger, born roughly between 1997 and 2012
And, at the end of it all, a 73-year-old former judge — who later remembered fondly her days studying peacefully beside the river Ganga — was chosen to lead the nation.
Sushila Karki was sworn in as Nepal’s 42nd Prime Minister on September 12, 2025, becoming the first woman in the Himalayan republic’s history to hold the office. A former chief justice of Nepal, she became Nepal’s leader as a direct consequence of the country’s most violent political unrest in a generation.
Her ascent was fueled by discord and decided on Discord, the latter being the name for a gaming-communication platform.
The kindling may have been gathering for years, thanks to Nepal’s chronic political instability: 14 governments in 17 years under eight different prime ministers since the abolition of the monarchy in 2008. Corruption was endemic. Youth unemployment hovered around 20%, and the government estimated that more than 2,000 young Nepalis were leaving the country every single day to seek work abroad.
By the morning of September 8, thousands of young protesters, many of them still in school uniforms, gathered at Maitighar Mandala in central Kathmandu and marched towards the parliament. Their grievances were broader than a single law or Instagram as social lifeline.
They raised slogans against corruption, nepotism, the so-called “nepo kids”, children of ruling-class politicians who flaunted lavish lifestyles on social media even as the platforms were being blocked for ordinary citizens.
Analysts said the Oli regime banned social media to stop all the group talk about nepotism, among other such reasons. The ban brought the groups and the talk to the street instead.
The government responded with security forces opening fire at the crowd, killing 17 protesters in Kathmandu alone. Two more were killed in police action outside the capital; hundreds were injured. Doctors at a Kathmandu morgue, which received 47 bodies over two days, determined that the majority had died from high-velocity gunshot wounds to the head, neck, chest, or abdomen.
The killings were documented in real time on social networks after the ban was belatedly lifted. By that time, it had transformed into a conflagration.
The following day, Kathmandu burned — the parliament building, the Supreme Court complex, the prime minister’s and president’s residences, police stations, the headquarters of KP Oli’s Communist Party were targeted.
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