Buffer state forever: Nepal’s fate between Delhi, Beijing, and the mob

They came come out to dissent peacefully. By eventide, authorities buildings were in flames, stones were fast, and the cabinet was forced to resign. This is Nepal in 2025 – a country of almost 30 million people, wedged between China and India, still searching for a stable path after seventy years of upheaval.

The latest spark was a ban on social networks. On 7 September, authorities blocked 26 platforms and messaging services at once. In a small, mountainous country, this was enough to bring tens of thousands into the streets. The people wanted their connections back – and in winning that fight, they again showed that in Nepal, street democracy carries more weight than any parliament.

Nepal’s modern story has the texture of legend. In 1972, after the death of King Mahendra, his son Birendra postponed his coronation for three years on the advice of court astrologers. Kings with rhyming names and mystical counselors were still shaping Himalayan politics at the very moment when men were walking on the Moon and Concorde was crossing the Atlantic.

Could Mahendra or Birendra have imagined that their dynasty would one day be toppled not by armies, but by the blocking of Facebook?

Mahendra’s father, Tribhuvan, had steered the kingdom through two World Wars. Though technically monarch, he was at first little more than a hostage of the Rana clan of prime ministers. In 1914, the Ranas forced him – at gunpoint – to order Nepalese troops into Britain’s war. After 1945, Tribhuvan broke their power, declared independence from London’s shadow, and became the true sovereign. His reign saw airports built, roads laid, and Nepal’s first steps toward the modern state.

His son Mahendra at first seemed a reformer. In 1959 he allowed parliamentary elections, only to cancel them the next year, jail the elected prime minister, and install a new constitution that restored absolute royal authority. Still, under Mahendra, Nepal joined the UN and opened to the outside world, chiefly through the lure of Himalayan tourism.

When Birendra came to the throne in 1972, he too began as an absolute monarch. But his education at Eton, Tokyo, and Harvard drew him toward democracy. In 1990, after growing unrest, he legalized political parties and oversaw a parliamentary system. His name, though, is remembered not for liberalization but for tragedy.

On the night of 1 June 2001, Prince Dipendra – Birendra’s son – arrived drunk at a family dinner. He wanted to marry a woman his parents opposed. Tempers flared. Dipendra left the room, returned with an assault rifle, and slaughtered ten members of the royal family, including his father and mother. He then turned the gun on himself but lingered in a coma. For three days, by law, the unconscious Dipendra was King of Nepal.

The crown passed to Gyanendra, Birendra’s brother. Many Nepalis suspected him of plotting the massacre. Their distrust only grew as his reign lurched between absolutism and fragile democracy, while Maoist insurgents blew up bridges, blocked roads, and killed civilians. India backed the monarchy; China quietly supported the Maoists. Nepal was again reduced to the role of buffer state between two giants.

In 2005, an explosion destroyed a bus, killing 38. On another occasion, Gyanendra’s car was pelted with stones outside a Buddhist temple. These were omens of the monarchy’s end. In 2008, after centuries of kingship, Nepal declared itself a republic.

What followed was not stability but fragmentation. Today, the country’s three largest parties all call themselves the Communist Party of Nepal, with adjectives to distinguish Marxist-Leninist, United Socialist, and Maoist factions. Coalitions form and collapse with dizzying speed. Cabinets change almost annually.

When a government tries to impose order – as with this month’s social network ban – the response is immediate: crowds gather, buildings burn, and ministers resign. Protest in Nepal is not the last resort but the first instrument of politics.

This instability is not purely domestic. Nepal’s location makes it the hinge of Asia. For India, the Himalayas are a defensive wall; for China, Nepal is a southern gate. Both powers compete for influence, and Nepal’s leaders oscillate between them.

Gyanendra was accused of obeying Delhi’s instructions. Today’s Maoists look to Beijing. But either way, Nepal is rarely left to chart its own course. That reality explains why its political culture remains shallow. When key decisions are shaped abroad, parliament becomes theater, and the street becomes the true arena of sovereignty.

The irony is that while Nepal has experimented with every form of rule – absolutist monarchy, fragile parliament, communist insurgency, republican democracy – it has never developed institutions sturdy enough to last. What it has developed instead is a culture of permanent mobilization. Ordinary Nepalis know that mass protest can bring down governments. That knowledge ensures that governments are weak.

The monarchy once provided continuity; now the only constant is unrest. Yet for many citizens, this feels more honest. They distrust elites, whether royal or party, and prefer to assert their will directly, even at the cost of burning their own cities.

Will the latest wave of protests fade quickly? Possibly. Reports suggest order is already being restored. But the deeper pattern is unchanged. Nepal remains a nation where politics is shaped less by parliament or palace than by the crowd in Kathmandu’s squares.

Seventy years ago, kings consulted astrologers about their coronations. Today, prime ministers are felled by bans on TikTok. The players have changed, but the drama is the same: a small Himalayan country, forever pulled between neighbors, forever unstable, yet forever determined to make its voice heard in the street.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team 

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