Tanuja Pandey, poster girl of Nepal’s Gen Z protests, seeks justice for fallen comrades

Tanuja Pandey, who turned 25 on September 15, is now one of the most prominent Gen Z names in Nepal, along with Rakshya Bam, Sudan Gurung, Balen Shah and others, for toppling a government through their anti-corruption campaign that many of them rue turned violent due to infiltration into their September 8 protest march by vested interests, hooligans, and political opportunists.

As of now, with the September 8 protests claiming several lives, including her friends, in police fire, even as mobs went on a rampage and the government of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli quitting his post along with President Ram Chandra Poudel a day later, Pandey tells Open, “It honestly feels very weird (to be catapulted into national fame and to see her name appear in international media). I wasn’t expecting this attention at all, and to be completely honest, it makes me a little uncomfortable.”

Pandey, who calls herself “a climate justice organiser”, and is a lawyer and anti-corruption activist, adds that it feels like every move she makes is being watched or judged, and that is overwhelming. “On top of that, I keep hearing rumours about myself completely made up and even wild conspiracies. People are associating me with different groups or agendas that I have nothing to do with, which is frustrating. What feels most unethical to me is how narrative should be about Nepal, about justice for the young lives we lost and somehow made it about the protestors. It feels wrong when the focus shifts away from the real cause and the bigger fight.”

Tanuja Pandey hits out against rampant corruption and elitism in a pre-protest media interview

Nepal is hesitantly snailing back to normalcy under an interim prime minister, former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, who is the first option of Gen Z protesters, who voiced their choice on a social media platform, Discord. Karki is the first woman to serve as Nepal’s Chief Justice, is now the country’s first woman Prime Minister, and is expected to expand the cabinet and lead the country until the elections in early 2026.

The Gen Z protests — outcome of deep discontent with a seemingly dysfunctional government where comments from the top brass showed insensitivities to the plight of the common man — has created deep disquiet notwithstanding the change of guard in Nepal. Spearheaded by a few others and Pandey on Instagram handle @gen.znepal, it led to violent mobs hijacking the protests, resulting in the assault of former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife, and eventually in the death of former premier Jhala Nath Khanal’s wife, Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar, after arsonists set fire to her house.

With Karki now at the helm, the government has declared the students killed in the protests martyrs and offered their kin a compensation of 10 lakh Nepali rupees. According to reports, efforts are on to either repair or rebuild the properties, including government buildings, which gutted in the fire set on them by arsonists.

As uneasy calm persists and with several of Nepal’s citizens reeling back slowly from the shock of an unexpected turmoil and uprising marked by brutal violence as well as incidents of robbery that often accompanies lawlessness, Pandey spoke to Open about the genesis of the campaign that threw the government of Oli out of power.

She was part of what she calls naming and shaming campaign online of “Nepo babies”, children of powerful politicians who lived and flaunted their lavish lifestyle on social media platforms. And suddenly, to stop the spread of the campaign, the government banned most social media platforms, including Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms that the youth widely used for their anti-graft campaigns. With digital space being their civic space, as Pandey states, theirs was confined to the web and manned by around 25 people who converged for a cause. She hastens to add that the Gen Z campaign was leaderless.

It so happened that one of the videos by Pandey on Instagram on exploitation of natural resources of Nepal went viral following which she was interviewed in the media and that too went viral. In that video, Pandey is shown as arguing vehemently for the rule of law and transparency. She argued, “Democracy should be inclusive… should not benefit only a certain group. Democracy should not be limited to the pages of the Constitution, but it was brought to uplift the lives of every citizen in the country… 1-2% of people in Nepal are enjoying better livelihood and the remaining are left to struggle and live in destitute and despair.” She concluded by saying, “Our fight is against this (perverted) idea of democracy.”

In the process, thanks to her vehemence and defiance, she earned an instant fame for herself as a fighter for the Gen Z cause in a country one in three citizens are aged 18–35 and one in four citizens live below the national poverty line.

Pandey tells Open, “Ahead of the September 8 march, I prepared on @gen.znepal Instagram page the ‘dos and don’ts’ of the protests, including circulation of safety guidelines because I am a climate justice organiser who is used to handling such campaigns… we had asked people who are not Gen Z not to be part of our protests. We are non-partisan and we didn’t want people with vested interests to join us and create problems for our cause because ours is an independent movement, a united youth voice.”

She recalls that at sharp 9am on September 8 the protests started off from Maitighar, with them chanting the national anthem from near the Everest Hotel. Maitighar, a neighbourhood in Kathmandu, features the Maitighar Mandala monument, one of the city’s most iconic landmarks. “Until we reached Baneshwor, which was just a few kms away, there was no problem,” she says. Baneshwor is where the Parliament building is located. It was then that Pandey says toughies and people in bikes started pouring in and the Gen Z protesters appealed to them to leave them alone and not join their protests, to no avail. “Everything happened out of nowhere,” she avers.

Pandey says she and her friends are now fighting for justice to their friends who were killed in police action. “It was a failure of the state. We want immediate justice to our fallen comrades,” she says, adding that the other demands of the Gen Z movement include the following:

1. We want elections to be held and we want the new government to build institutions to check corruption

2. Oli and his former Home Minister (Ramesh Lekhak) must appear before the courts for their role in the killings of our friends

The popular Gen Z leader says that there are changes that happen to people when they come to power, especially when they see that they can get away with impunity even after looting natural resources. “It is not ideology alone that matters. Whether people are Left or Right doesn’t matter. When it comes to corruption, I think it is more about ethics and morality than ideology.”

She is crestfallen as well as piqued that there are rumours in a section of the media and social media now linking her to the Nepali Congress and a former politician, Ramesh Nath Pandey, who had been the country’s minister of foreign affairs during the royal regime. “They are saying I am his granddaughter. The truth is that my grandfather had passed away 42 years ago and I am from Jhapa in eastern Nepal where I did my schooling before coming to Kathmandu to do my law degree.”

Pandey continues to be hyperactive on the social media, saying her campaign for transparency and good governance will continue. On September 13, she said on social media: “Citizens are meant to be the toughest critics of any government. We are not meant to be cheerleaders for leaders who were sent there to do good in the first place. Our job is to question, challenge, and hold them accountable. Glorification breeds blind loyalty, and blind loyalty breeds populism. We are the real opposition.”

Meanwhile, she used Gen Z tactics, mainly visual communication, to poke fun at her detractors and those out to spread lies about what she calls “fictitious” links to politicians from the days of the monarchy. Along with the caption that reads thus — Nepal has its first female Prime

Minister. To those spreading hate or rumors about me… here’s a CAP for you. While also ensuring that no populist returns. Long live @gen.znepal — there is a photo of her bending her face forward to brandish the message on the cap: “F*ck off Respectfully.”

As of now, Nepal under the interim prime minister faces daunting tasks of preserving the rule of law, as evident from Nepal’s army’s disclosure that they had as of September 12, recovered more than 100 guns looted during the uprising. Besides, more than 12,500 prisoners had escaped from during the chaos.

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