*Originally published in 2025 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered directly to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

Kathmandu Valley holds Nepal’s capital city and its largest traditional metropolitan region.  It is known worldwide for its peace ethic, freedom of religion deeply entrenched in its new secular Constitution, 2015, and related ethnic and community multiculturalism (also entrenched in the Constitution). It has recently been in the news for youth protests that took down a government. Tensions between religion and secularism were more visible before the Constitution, 2015. The September 2025 movement does not appear to reflect those sorts of concerns.  What, then, were its causes?  We suggest the primary sources as: economic and resource politics combined with concerns with freedom of political expression and representation as well as free access to modern technologies in a complex traditional society with coexisting traditional and modern communities, social practices, and economies. That is, important youth concerns centered upon entry into the job market, resource politics, political expression and representation, as well as technology access in a society highly engaged in daily use of high-tech in the midst of longstanding (sometimes centuries old) and historically still-present economic and other traditions and practices.

Nepal, which has experienced democratic stability for more than a decade along with federal and republican constitution in 2015, has once again faced a violent youth protest last month – in September 2025.  Those youths, aged between 13-27, who use social media almost ubiquitously, provided the breaking point that culminated in the breakdown and protests of September 8th and 9th in which government buildings, i.e., Parliament, President’s Office, Central Secretariat with the office of the Prime Minister, Supreme Court, etc., were set to light. On September 9th and 10th, the national airport in Kathmandu was shut down for at least 24 hours, and public life was abnormal due to the government-imposed curfew and mobility restrictions for the 11th, 12th and 13th of September. A week later, things seemed pretty well back to normal in local neighborhoods amid the periodic good-spirited nervous wonder. People seemed proud at the outcome of having achieved the ouster of the government, the dissolving of the parliament, and the nomination of a woman as Interim Prime Minister with a mandate to hold new election of parliament in March 2026.

The movement, which was announced against the government's attempts to ban social media, responded to an inner story such that the government issued a notice asking social media companies to register within a week, stating that, to paraphrase, ‘we're going to ban social media… we've only said we will regulate it.’ The day after the seven-day deadline to impose the regulation expired, the government shut down social media without even creating a law, as the Supreme Court of Nepal had instructed. The frustration of the youth eventually led some of them to question the political relevance of the top leaders at the center of power—Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, and Maoist Suprimo Pushpa Kamal Dahal. The youth, who were chanting slogans against political corruption, popularized a saying from the street and stated that if Prime Minister Oli and Congress President Deuba had even a little leadership ability, a little sensitivity toward the lives of common people, and the patience to listen and understand what others had to say, the youths wouldn't have had to take to the streets on the 8th of September itself. Eventual demand of the street was pustantaran (generational transformation of political leadership) for better Nepal.

While Nepal maintains some minor (relative to many countries) social tensions across and within religions, it is notable for hosting many actively practicing formal and informal religions and local traditional, cultural, religious, and spiritual practices. According to Acharya, who reminds us of the dangers of religious nationalist movements inherent in the Hindu nationalist movement that is sometimes present in Nepal, Nepal maintains robustly secular principles of governance combined with strong........

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