Nepal’s days of rage, when its young people won the ouster of the prime minister, left the door open to the most unthinkable outcomes — even rumors about the restoration of a dethroned king.
That turned out to be a brief royalist dream. It is a former chief justice, Sushil Karki who now leads Nepal after last week’s protests and arson attacks, not King Gyanendra, who ended his family’s 449-year-old dynasty by abdicating in 2008. And with that, the door swung shut on the fantasy of remaking Nepal as a kingdom.
But the so-called Gen Z protests disclosed something about the extremity of Nepal’s situation, once its army had restored order. Nepalis from all walks were ready to reject the system they had fought for decades to achieve, even without any clear sense of comes next.
Protesters had taken to the street with placards raised against corruption and spoiled elites. Homes were burned down, too, starting with those belonging to the leaders of the three parties that have rotated in and out of power since 2015.
“The young people gave no sense that they wanted the monarchy back,” only that they were furious at the post-monarchical establishment, according to Amish Mulmi, 41, an author who writes about Nepal and its geopolitics. “They just didn’t want these parties back.”
While the Gen Zs lack a unifying figure, for now, there is another political idea waiting in the wings: an alliance of monarchists who want to replace the carousel of republican leaders with a uniform allegiance to the crown. Monarchist groups had risen up in March to hail the former king and demand his restitution, only to be put down forcibly by the state police.
In retrospect, their uprising looks like a harbinger of last week’s uprising.
The monarchists have at least some common ground with the gigantic Gen Z protest movement, including the will to rush the barricades. One pro-royalist protester was shot dead in the earlier violence, at least 70 people were injured, and others were taken into custody.
The ruling Shah dynasty had withstood challenges from all sides until a horrific explosion of rage from within the palace. In June 2001, the crown prince Dipendra took an AK-47 rifle into his family’s dining room and massacred the sitting King Birendra, the queen, seven other royals and then himself. Gyanendra, who was never popular, succeeded the slain king, and the monarchy itself began to crumble.
The three parties that emerged as dominant within the post-royal order — Nepali Congress, Maoist and Communist — each had waged armed struggle against the monarchy. Never a united front, they also competed with each other. After Nepal became a republic, though, they have mainly fought through elections, without gunfire.
The governments they formed were unstable, on average lasting barely a year. But a kind of stasis set in, usually with two sharing power and a third in opposition. That bred the corruption and impunity that frustrated the Gen Z protesters. Decentralization and social media made such problems more visible.
Dhawal Shumshere Rana, the general secretary of the Rashtriya Rajatantra Party, a small but significant pro-monarchy party, calls the king a “symbol of authority that was necessary to keep the country united.” His vision calls for a restored monarchy with Hinduism as a state religion.
The Gen Z protest organizers had asked their comrades not to carry any political flags, not even the national flag. They explained later that Nepal’s distinctive pennants had become too associated with “ultranationalism” of the royalist kind.
Mr. Rana, a political scientist and former mayor of the city of Nepalganj, knows Gen Z was not calling for a restoration. He, too, believes in democracy, and wants a constitutional monarchy, not the return to an absolute monarch. Yet historically, “everyone would accept the king as the leader of the nation,” he said. That was a unifying bond, and “the people are used to that kind of authority.”
Mr. Mulmi, the author, took the opposite point of view, one shared by most of Kathmandu’s political and professional classes. “There’s a certain nostalgia toward the monarchy: ‘Oh when the king was there, these people would dare to do that’,” Mr. Mulmi said. But he said the real difference is that, “When the kings were there, the corruption was never revealed.”
As the chaos escalated on Tuesday, with almost every organ of state power — apart from the army — targeted by arsonists, many ordinary Nepalis wondered where the former monarchs stood.
The former king, now Gyanendra Shah, lives in a decommissioned palace, which protesters left alone. He issued a statement in support of Gen Z and its aspirations, with mild wishes for an end to the anarchy. His niece, the former princess Purnika Shah, went further on Facebook. She commended “the dreams and courage of the youth which will drive us forward” but said that “guidance, security and stability” were necessary, too.
“Only when heritage and youth are together will our country remain strong,” Ms. Shah posted.
It seemed to some local journalists that the power of the protests might be converted into a reinstatement of the monarchy. In the end, that didn’t happen. The president remained in place to officiate Ms. Karki’s installation as interim prime minister, after representatives of Gen Z signaled their approval of her. She has announced elections for March 5 to replace legislators halfway through their term.
Mr. Rana agreed that now is not the time for a royal restoration. He has accepted his party’s fifth-place showing in parliamentary elections in 2022 as a defeat for the cause. But he has an eye on the future.
A “counterrevolution” against the Gen Zs by the three big parties after the next elections “could bring in a backlash again,” said Mr. Rana. “That’s the point at which monarchy could be one option.”
Bhadra Sharma and Hannah Beech contributed reporting.
Alex Travelli is a correspondent based in New Delhi, writing about business and economic developments in India and the rest of South Asia.
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