Nepal’s Fire Didn’t Start With a Social Media Ban.

This week, Nepal erupted in deadly protests after the government’s sudden “Social Media Ban”. 19 people dead. Students shot in uniform. Parliament engulfed in flames. But, this fire didn’t start with a social media ban, that was just the spark. The blaze has been smoldering for years.

For many of us, especially those from the Terai, the system has always felt like it was designed to exclude.

Even something as fundamental as a citizenship card becomes a battle against bribes, delays, degrading questions, and deliberate barriers. For women, the process is even more dehumanizing. For those unfamiliar with the process, in Nepal, you can only apply for a citizenship card once you turn 16. You’re right to think, how does a citizenship card matter when my home is ablaze. Because that’s part of the protest.

I’ve felt this exclusion firsthand. In 2023, my dad and I spent 3 months trying to wrestle with district bureaucrats to get a citizenship card for me. What’s further shocking is that many of the absurd rules bureaucrats cite are actually backed by a constitution that’s been curved, time and again, to assert the interests of the powerful.

As a student who had taken a gap year to complete my U.S. college applications,
that final stretch, trying to get a passport while preparing college applications, broke me. External obstacles feel lighter than those thrown at you by your own country.

I share my experience today to assert that the plight of my fellow youth is the inherent failure in the current governance of my country. It is my home and its hurting today.

This is what young people are rising against. Not just censorship. But a political architecture built to suppress. High unemployment. Poor quality public education. The migration pressures youth and men face just to provide for their families. And when peaceful protest is met with live bullets, it stops being about politics, it becomes a human rights crisis, one the world needs to care about.

From across the ocean, I may not be in the streets. But my voice marches with them. I send it out to echo the voices silenced forever.