Nepal between the red flag and the crown. A great story of communism, corruption, war, and revolution
For most of the world today, communism is either a museum artifact or a label for governments that have as much to do with Marx as they do with democracy. But in Nepal, a small country squeezed between India and China, communists are still in power—at least on paper. Former Maoist guerrillas sit in ministerial chairs, the country defines itself in its Constitution as a “socialism-oriented republic,” and the largest parties still carry red flags with the unavoidable hammer and sickle.
At the same time, tens of thousands of young people—the so-called “Generation Z,” who have no emotional connection to communism but plenty of experience with corruption as part of their daily lives—are taking to the streets of Kathmandu and provincial cities. Their protests in 2025 forced the prime minister to resign, and the targets of their anger were not only royal flags from the past but also the headquarters of all major parties—including the “communist” ones.
In the background, the ghost of the monarchy is returning as well. Former King Gyanendra is welcomed by thousands of people demanding the return of a “Hindu kingdom,” carrying pictures of former rulers and messages saying that “the king was better than these politicians.” Nepal, a country that was supposed to close one century of feudal history by abolishing the monarchy, is once again opening the question of whether the revolution delivered what it promised.
This text attempts to untangle that unusual story. How did a poor Himalayan kingdom become a bastion of democratically elected communists in the first place? What remains of that idea after a civil war and the transition into pragmatic, clientelist governance? How does Nepal fit into the geopolitical game of China, India, and the United States? And why are young people and the diaspora increasingly demanding “something third,” outside the communism–monarchy axis?
To understand today’s Nepal—Maoists in suits, a king running a retro campaign, young people in the streets—we must return to the beginning: to a kingdom that lived for decades in a semi-feudal system and slowly opened its doors to the modern world.
From kingdom to republic: how Nepal came to communism at all
On the world map, Nepal is an elongated strip of land between the Indian plains and the Tibetan plateau. In history textbooks, it is described as “the only South Asian state never conquered by colonial powers.” Yet that formal independence long concealed a simple fact: until the mid-20th century, Nepal was a deeply backward, semi-feudal monarchy ruled by a narrow elite.
In such an environment, communist ideas did not arrive through university debates—there was practically no university—but through cracks in the old order: through the discontent of peasants, anger against local power holders, inspiration from anti-colonial movements in India, and ideological echoes from Moscow and Beijing.
Early oligarchy: the king as a symbol, power in the hands of one family
From 1846 to 1951, Nepal formally had a king, but real power was held by the Rana family—military prime ministers who turned the state into private property. It was a system in which land was distributed as feudal rent, peasants worked as semi-serfs, and the country was isolated from the world. Westerners needed special permits even to enter Kathmandu; railways, industry, and mass education bypassed the country.
For most of the population, “politics” did not exist. The king was a distant figure, the Rana prime ministers were “gods,” and local landlords and the caste system determined every aspect of life. In such a vacuum, the first contacts with socialist ideas came from outside—through Nepali emigrants and students in India, through the influence of the Indian Congress and communists, through news of the Russian Revolution and later the Chinese one.
The Rana regime fell only in 1951, when several factors converged: pressure from Indian leadership after its de facto independence, an armed uprising and political movement led by the Nepali Congress, and the calculations of King Tribhuvan himself, who sided with reformists to overthrow the Ranas. Nepal entered a new phase—but did not immediately abandon autocracy.
The first democratic experiment and the return of absolute power
After 1951 came a short period of euphoria. Political parties were legalized, space opened for newspapers, and trade unions were formed. Among the emerging parties were the first communist formations—small, divided, but ideologically charged circles dreaming of “doing what the Bolsheviks did in Russia.”
In 1959, the first general elections were held, and the Nepali Congress—a center-left party with an anti-feudal program—won. B. P. Koirala became the first democratic prime minister and tried to set the country in motion. Agrarian reform, expansion of education, and modernization of institutions followed.
But the experiment lasted only a year. King Mahendra—Tribhuvan’s son—judged that multiparty politics and “foreign ideological influences” threatened him. In November 1960, he dissolved parliament, arrested the prime minister, and introduced the “Panchayat” system. Parties were banned, and the king ruled through a hierarchy of local councils that formally represented “the people” but in reality filtered everything through loyalty to the monarchy.
For communists, this meant a return to illegality. Some leaders ended up in prison, some fled to India, and some tried to adapt to the new game by seeking compromise with the king.
Panchayat: authoritarian nationalism and the birth of the underground left
The Panchayat system* from the 1960s to 1990 combined three elements: royal absolutism, promotion of “one nation, one religion, one language” (Hinduism, Nepali), and gradual top-down modernization. King Mahendra, and later his son Birendra, built roads, opened schools, and accepted aid from India, China, the USSR, and the West. Political control, however, remained strict; unions and parties were formally illegal.
*Panchayat was an authoritarian political system in Nepal introduced in 1960 after the king’s coup, in which political parties were banned and real power concentrated in the king’s hands. Formally, it consisted of a hierarchy of “people’s councils” from the local to the national level, meant to represent citizens’ will, but in practice they served as a controlled channel of loyalty to the regime. The system combined royal absolutism, Hindu nationalism, and limited top-down modernization, suppressing political pluralism, unions, and media freedom until mass protests in 1990 overthrew it and opened the way to multiparty democracy.
In this space, communists began to grow again—precisely because they were among the few willing to openly challenge the monarchy. But they were far from unified. The global split between Moscow and Beijing also divided the Nepali left. Pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese factions emerged; some leaned toward a parliamentary path (however theoretical under a party ban), while others openly called for guerrilla warfare.
The most radical attempt in this period was the so-called Jhapa movement in the early 1970s. Young communists inspired by Indian Naxalites decided to “start the revolution” literally by killing local landlords. The state quickly crushed them; many were killed or imprisoned. The survivors drew a pragmatic lesson: armed struggle without a broad base was doomed to fail, and instead one had to “work with the people” and eventually enter legal politics.
At the same time, another segment of communists chose a completely different opportunism—agreeing to tactical cooperation with the monarchy in exchange for room to operate, emphasizing nationalism and “friendship with the king” against Indian influence. Thus, even at this stage, the Nepali left displayed something that would repeatedly resurface later: a deep tendency toward factionalism and ideological pragmatism whenever an opportunity for power appeared.
1990: a democratic revolution that did not know what to do with victory
By the late 1980s, the Panchayat system entered crisis. Economic hardship, the growth of an educated young population, and the global decline of Cold War regimes undermined the legitimacy of royal rule. Mass protests erupted in the streets of Kathmandu and other cities. Crucially, for the first time, a broad front formed that brought together liberal democrats (the Nepali Congress) and communists (reformed Marxist-Leninists).
The People’s Movement of 1990 forced King Birendra to concede. Panchayat was abolished, political parties legalized, and a new Constitution adopted, establishing a constitutional monarchy with multiparty democracy. For many Nepalese, it seemed like a historic moment: finally a “normal” country, with elections, parliament, and a free press. But much of it was an illusion.
The communist factions reorganize. The most important becomes the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), CPN-UML, which accepts multiparty democracy and develops its own doctrine of “people’s multiparty democracy.” In the 1991 elections it becomes the second-strongest party and soon briefly leads the government. For the first time in South Asia, an openly communist party comes to power through free elections.
However, it shares the system with others and very quickly falls into the same patterns as everyone else. Between 1990 and the early 2000s, Nepal changes governments almost every year. Coalitions collapse over petty disputes, parties split into factions, and corruption scandals follow almost every administration. Democracy exists on paper, but for a peasant on the periphery very little changes. The country remains in the hands of local elites; the road to the village may be paved, but there are no jobs… young people increasingly leave for construction work or the army in India.
Communists and the Congress sit in parliament, but in many eyes they increasingly look the same—a small caste of urban politicians fighting for positions rather than for “the people.” In this vacuum, space opens for something more radical.
Why communists in particular become a channel of discontent
In the early 1990s Nepal has all the elements for a social explosion: enormous class and caste inequalities, rural poverty, marginalized ethnic and linguistic groups, and a society in which the monarchy is formally limited but power structures remain very similar to the old ones. The democratic system fails to deliver what it promised—stability, growth, and a minimum of social justice.
At that moment, those communists who have already concluded that the “democratic path” leads only to elitism step onto the stage—the radical Maoists. Unlike the UML, which becomes a normal parliamentary left-wing party, the Maoist leadership judges that the terrain is ripe for armed rebellion. They do not start from the Soviet model, but from the Chinese one: guerrilla warfare from the periphery, the peasantry as the main base, and a politico-military structure that does not seek ministerial posts but the overthrow of a “semi-feudal” state.
To understand why thousands of young peasants, oppressed by caste and poverty, were willing to follow this call, one must keep in mind the entire trajectory—from the Rana oligarchy, through royal autocracy, a brief democratic interlude, to a system in which the face of power changes but the structure does not. In that sense, Nepali communism is not an imported exotic project, but a domestic response to cycles of disappointment. In a broader historical context, this is a very interesting story, because we are talking about a communist armed insurgency in the 1990s, at a time when the world had already left such “methods” behind.
Thus, in 1996, a new, bloody phase of the story opens. The Maoist “People’s War,” a decade-long civil war that will bring down the monarchy and bring “radical” communists to power—but, once again, raise the question of what happens to a revolution once it wins…
From the underground to the “People’s War”: the genesis of Nepali Maoism
When multiparty democracy was introduced in 1990, as mentioned, most of the left took the path of parliament and compromise. A smaller, more radical group reached the opposite conclusion. For them, the new order was merely a refreshed façade of the old system, and real change could not be achieved through elections but through war. Around these people formed the core of the future Communist Party of Nepal, with Prachanda as the organizer from the interior and Baburam Bhattarai as the ideological mind.
For them, Nepal was ideal terrain for Maoism. There was no industrial proletariat, but there were countless poor peasants, oppressed castes, and neglected ethnic communities. In their worldview, the main obstacles were feudal structures in the countryside, dependence on India, and a corrupt bureaucracy that turned democracy into the business of a small caste of politicians. From this they derived a program of a “new democratic revolution” that would first overthrow the monarchy and dismantle old hierarchies, and only then, in the long term, build socialism.
The “People’s War” begins in February 1996 with a series of coordinated attacks on police stations and state buildings in rural districts. In the first months it looks like a larger guerrilla incident, but the rebellion spreads and the Maoists gradually establish parallel authority across entire regions. In the villages they capture, they introduce people’s committees, their own courts and taxes, abolish certain traditional practices such as dowries, and publicly humiliate local moneylenders. Their ranks fill with landless youth, women who for the first time gain positions as commanders, and members of minorities who do not identify with Hindu national identity. In other words, Nepal is full of the disenfranchised, and for them the struggle is almost a logical choice.
The state initially responds as if dealing with a security problem, then moves to full militarization. A state of emergency is declared, the army takes over operations, and police and intelligence services carry out mass arrests and brutal interrogations. The Maoists respond with executions of “class enemies,” ambushes, and kidnappings. Entire valleys are caught between two fires, and the death toll over ten years rises to tens of thousands. The war destroys infrastructure, blocks investment, and—quite predictably—halts the country’s development.
Amid this chaos, in 2001 the aura of the Nepali crown collapses as well. Crown Prince Dipendra kills almost the entire royal family in one night, including the popular Birendra, and then himself dies from his wounds. His uncle Gyanendra ascends the throne, but never gains even a fraction of his predecessor’s legitimacy. When this new king abolishes parliament in 2005 and assumes absolute power in the name of “stability,” he turns both democratic parties and part of the left against him. Under pressure from the streets and with mediation from New Delhi, an alliance of former enemies emerges: the Congress, the UML, and the Maoists.
The People’s Movement of 2006 forces the king to step down, a peace agreement is signed, the Maoist army moves forward, and the country gains a Constituent Assembly tasked with deciding the new order. In the 2008 elections, the Maoists emerge as the strongest single party. The monarchy is abolished, Nepal becomes a republic, and Prachanda enters the presidential palace as prime minister. A revolution that lived for ten years in forests and valleys enters institutions, and communists for the first time gain the opportunity not only to overthrow the system, but to run it.
Communism in power: ideals, disappointments, and comparison with China
The moment communists took over the government, the question quickly arose whether this would be the beginning of a path toward socialism or the beginning of the end of the revolution itself. In the first years after the war, it seemed that the Nepali left would at least partially fulfill its promises. The Constitution declared the country a federal democratic republic “oriented toward socialism,” laws introduced quotas for women and marginalized groups, and public discourse constantly spoke of class justice, peasants, and workers.
Behind this rhetoric, however, reality remained stubbornly similar to the old one. Major land reforms were never implemented, so power relations in the countryside stayed much the same. The economic model also did not change dramatically. Nepal remained a poor market economy reliant on remittances from the diaspora, imports, and small-scale entrepreneurship. Former revolutionaries very quickly integrated into the same clientelist networks they had previously criticized. Many grew wealthy through construction projects, public procurement, and politics, while thousands of ordinary fighters waited for years for the compensation and land they had been promised.
Parties that still call themselves communist began to behave internally like classic power brokers. The CPN-UML had been accustomed to parliamentary games since the 1990s, and after entering the system the Maoists followed the same path. Constant coalition deals with the Nepali Congress, endless factional struggles, splits and defections from camp to camp, and corruption scandals involving former commanders and ministers gradually consumed the moral capital of the People’s War. The label “communist” came to signify primarily membership in a particular network of people and interests, rather than adherence to a project of radical social transformation.
A comparison with China clearly shows how different this communism is from the one it nominally invokes. China is a one-party power with enormous industrial capacity and a state that plans and disciplines. Nepal is a multiparty, chronically unstable democracy with limited resources, a weak administration, and an economy dependent on foreign capital and labor abroad. Another paradox lies in the fact that during the war Beijing openly supported the Nepali monarchy as a guarantor of stability, kept its distance from the Maoists, and labeled them a problem. Real ties between the Chinese party and Nepali communists strengthen only when the latter renounce guerrilla warfare and accept the logic of the system—precisely at the moment when their “Maoism” becomes more a label than an actual policy.
The result of all this is that Nepali communism has normalized and become part of the establishment it was meant to overthrow. On a symbolic level, red flags remain, speeches about workers and peasants, monuments to fallen fighters, and constitutional references to socialism. On the level of everyday life, what remains are clientelist ties, dysfunctional institutions, high youth unemployment, and a sense that the political elite lives in a completely different reality from the rest of the country. It is therefore no surprise that the generation that burned government buildings in 2025 and forced the prime minister to resign sees no difference between “communist” and other major parties. In their eyes, they are all faces of the same era that turned revolution into a career.
Nepal in the shadow of giants: China, India, the USA (and Russia on the sidelines)
Everything that happens in Kathmandu is observed through the binoculars of New Delhi and Beijing, and every major move by the authorities is immediately measured by the question of whom it benefits. In practice, Nepal tries to play the old game of non-alignment, but is simultaneously squeezed by the interests of two Asian powers and, at times, American ambitions.
India has been the main pillar—and the main problem—for a century. Most trade goes through Indian ports, millions of Nepalis work in India, the two countries share an open border, language, and family ties. At the same time, Delhi often behaves like a “big brother,” raising an eyebrow whenever decisions are made in Nepal that it does not like. It supported the democratic revolution of 1990, mediated the agreement between democrats and Maoists against the king, but in 2015 it effectively suffocated the country with an unofficial blockade when Nepal’s new Constitution did not suit it. That shock led much of the public to perceive India as a threat, and turned then–Prime Minister K. P. Oli into a nationalist hero who, at least rhetorically, “dared to say no.”
China stepped into that crack. During the war, Beijing preferred the king and stability, viewing the Maoists as a factor of chaos. After 2006, the situation reversed. When the monarchy fell, China discovered that it could work with communists in power much as it had with the king—protecting its interests in Tibet and pushing infrastructure projects southward—but with ideologically more comfortable rhetoric. Nepal signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative, loans were opened for roads and hydropower plants, and seminars were organized in the capital where Chinese officials explained “how China succeeded.” When the UML and the Maoists united in 2018, the Chinese party saw that bloc almost as a sister structure and tried to keep it together even as it began to fall apart.
At the same time, Nepal cannot rely entirely on China. Geography still ties it to India, and any sharp shift toward Beijing provokes anxiety in New Delhi. For that reason, the authorities in Kathmandu constantly balance—signing trade and energy agreements with China while taking care not to lose Indian transit access, and periodically carrying out dramatic “resets” of relations with both neighbors. Washington occasionally enters this equation as well: during the war it supported the royal army against the Maoists, and later sought a foothold through projects such as the MCC energy package or military cooperation programs. Every such American move immediately arouses suspicion in China and among parts of the domestic left, prompting the government at times to retreat and emphasize that Nepal will not join any military alliances.
Russia, or rather the former USSR, is present primarily as a historical shadow. Soviet assistance played a role in early modernization efforts and in the formation of the first communist groups, but in today’s politics Moscow is a secondary player. Relations are cordial, with some trade and scholarships, occasionally a helicopter in the military arsenal, but key decisions about Nepal are still made within the Kathmandu–Delhi–Beijing triangle.
All of this together creates a situation in which every Nepali government—especially one that calls itself communist—must pursue a dual policy. At home it promises socialism and national pride; abroad it must reassure India, China, and the United States that it will not cross red lines. When it missteps in this choreography, the price is paid through blockades, delayed loans, and a loss of political space.
What do Nepalis think today? Gen-Z rebellion, monarchist revival, and the voice of the diaspora
For many Nepalis, the political class behaves as if it lives in another galaxy. This gap is most visible among the generation that grew up both after the war and after the monarchy. For them, “revolution” is something from school textbooks, and “communists” are people who ride in black SUVs and delete other people’s comments on Facebook.
The explosion of this discontent occurred in 2025, when the government, under the pretext of moral panic and “national security,” tried to ban key social media platforms. Young people who had for years watched their prospects shrink to emigrating to Qatar or working on construction sites in Europe experienced this as a direct attack on the only space they controlled. Protests began as peaceful gatherings of high school and university students, with banners against censorship and corruption, and ended as an open uprising after police fired into the crowd and killed several protesters. Images of burning government buildings and party offices went around the world, the prime minister was forced to resign, and a former judge with no party base ended up leading a caretaker government. Symbolically, it was the moment when Generation Z declared that it no longer trusted any of the old parties—not even those that call themselves communist.
At the same time, the king returns to the surface. Former monarch Gyanendra is accompanied on his tours by crowds demanding the return of a “Hindu kingdom”; protesters in Kathmandu carry his images and claim they “made a mistake in 2006.” Some of them are even former Maoist sympathizers who now say they received only corruption instead of justice. This monarchist wave is not a majority, but it is strong enough to disrupt the narrative of an irreversible republican victory. Very often behind royal flags lies a combination of frustration with the democratic circus and nostalgia for a time remembered as “more stable,” even though in reality it was deeply hierarchical.
Society therefore is not simply divided into communists and monarchists. There is a hard-core republican base that does not want the king back at any price, a smaller but vocal monarchist bloc, and between them a large and growing space of people who are “anti-everything” and searching for a third way. Part of this space has already been expressed through a new urban party that surprised established players in elections, though it too has not proven immune to internal conflicts. At a deeper level, the real third way still awaits political articulation.
Beyond the borders, this sense of exhaustion is echoed by hundreds of thousands of Nepalis in the diaspora. In the Gulf states, Malaysia, Korea, and increasingly in Europe, they work as cooks, cleaners, construction workers, caregivers—young people who have exchanged diplomas for hotel-chain uniforms or hard hats. Their view of Nepali politics is brutally pragmatic. They left because the state offered them nothing, and few of them believe the solution lies in the return of the king or in yet another “grand coalition” of communists and the Congress.
Among the more educated segment of the diaspora living in the United States, Britain, or Australia, instinctive support for democracy and human rights prevails, coupled with deep disappointment that Nepali parties cannot come close to such standards. For them, those countries appear far more organized. Monarchy is generally seen in these circles as a historical episode, while domestic communists are said to have “become like everyone else,” with their main ideology being their own networks of kinship and business ties.
If there is something that connects young protesters in Kathmandu and workers in Europe, it is the feeling that an entire political generation has been exhausted, and that neither the red nor the royal flag carries a convincing story anymore. In this space of discontent lies the potential for new movements and new leaders—but also the risk that the country remains trapped for years between nostalgia and cynicism, without a clear direction.
Why Nepal remains poor—and is there a “third way”?
Nepal is poor, and when all ideology is stripped away, one clear fact remains. It is a country with enormous potential, but every advantage comes at a cost. The Himalayas are a tourist magnet and a source of water for hydropower, but they are also a wall that makes every road, every network, every kilometer of railway, and every clinic on a hillside more expensive. Nepal is landlocked and largely dependent on other people’s routes, ports, and political moods. In other words, every border disruption or “unofficial” blockade turns into a national crisis. Moreover, nature here is not decoration but a constant risk factor. Earthquakes, landslides, and floods regularly wipe out what little infrastructure is built, and climate change further intensifies extreme weather patterns, making development more expensive than it would be on the plains.
But geography explains only part of the story. The other part is internal and more painful, because it shows that poverty is also politically produced. Nepal has lived too long in a cycle where regimes fall but institutions do not strengthen. The Rana oligarchy, then royal autocracy, then brief democratic attempts, then civil war, then a republic that constantly changes governments—all of this has produced a state that is often present as police and bureaucracy, but weakly present as something for the people. In such an environment, public money is spent slowly and poorly, projects drag on, and citizens’ trust that the state can deliver anything quickly evaporates. Corruption here is not only a moral problem but an economic anti-engine that slows everything down.
For this reason, Nepal has a third layer of poverty that is paradoxical. The country is kept alive to a large extent by the money of those who left it. Remittances from the diaspora fill household budgets, save families from hunger, and finance children’s education, but at the same time they become a substitute for a serious economic strategy. The state simply gets used to citizens financing their own lives, and young people get used to the idea that the “normal” path into adulthood is an airline ticket, not the local labor market. This creates a vicious circle. The weaker the domestic economy, the more people leave; the more people leave, the less energy and capacity remain to truly change the domestic economy. In this logic, communists, liberal parties, and “technocrats” all end up at the same point: everyone promises development, and the country continues to export people.
It is precisely here that the question of a “third way” opens up, one that is felt today both on the streets and in the diaspora. The first way is the restoration of the monarchy, which offers an emotional idea of order but no real answer to corruption, the economy, and Nepal’s modern social diversity. The second way is the continuation of the current game in which red and blue parties rotate in power, divide ministries, and continue to live off the same networks. The third way would not be a new ideology but a new discipline, in which politics is less a war of flags and more an agreement on basic rules—on the idea that institutions matter even when governments change, that public money is spent transparently, and that the state finally becomes capable of finishing what it starts.
That may sound banal, but for Nepal it is radical. Because it would mean that the development project would have to become more important than party victory, which runs counter to a political culture formed over decades. Such a “third way” would have to do several things at once. It would have to modernize infrastructure and the energy sector so that hydropower becomes a source of stable income rather than an eternal promise on paper. It would have to reform public administration so that jobs go to the competent, not to relatives and clans. It would have to create conditions in which young people do not feel that their only future is the airport, but that there is a middle class that can live from work in its own country. And it would have to keep foreign policy sufficiently balanced so that Nepal does not become a battleground for others’ conflicts, because every major investment or “aid” in this region is always also a lever of influence.
That is why the most important question, after everything Nepal has gone through, is actually a simple one. It is not whether Nepal will become a communist utopia, nor whether the king will return to the palace, but whether a state born of war and revolution will become functional and fair—stable enough that people want to stay in it. Communism in Nepal was a force for dismantling the old order, but today’s Nepal is asking for something harder than dismantling. It is asking for the ability to build.
If the anger of Generation Z and the frustration of the diaspora are transformed into lasting political energy, rather than just an explosion, Nepal could reach a new chapter in which the country is no longer defined by what it is against, but by what it can build. Otherwise, it will remain stuck between nostalgia and cynicism, between a red flag that has lost its substance and a royal flag that offers the past instead of the future. Nepal has proven that it knows how to topple a regime; now it must prove that it knows how to build a state. That people—whom we have come to know directly, since their diaspora is around us—are exceptionally hardworking and friendly, and despite enormous challenges they do not lose either hope or fighting spirit. On that path, we can only wish them all the luck and perseverance.
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