Deja Vu

‘Deja vu’, the recent events in Nepal have again played out a similar script as witnessed earlier in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the subcontinent and in Egypt and Syria in the Middle East a little earlier. The revolutions led by Gen Z seem to be a spontaneous revolt against poor governance by the ruling dispensations leading to full scale anarchy forcing the leading politicians to flee the country and those who fail end up being humiliated and even lynched by the unruly mobs. Then an unelected interim government occupies the seat of power, whether it was Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh or Sushila Karki in Nepal, the sequence of events are eerily  similar. The striking resemblance  makes one suspicious about the so called spontaneity of the unrest.

The medium here is the social media, which is exploited by the forces inimical to these countries and tool kits are deployed to engineer the events by agencies which are commonly being referred to as ‘deep state’. The economy was teetering on the brink of a collapse due to corruption and Chinese debt trap in SriLanka when ‘Aragalaya’ (Sinhalese for ‘Struggle’) happened, in Bangladesh, the stability of Shaikh Hasina government for more than a decade had helped boost the economy of this country which was once referred to as basket case of Asia. But absence of credible political opposition and the  ‘quota reforms’ i.e. reinstating of 30% quota for descendants of freedom fighters reinstated by the Supreme Court triggered the ‘July Revolution’. Modus operandi remained the same, through instigating the youth by means of social media.

Nepal has been plagued by unstable political coalitions ever since the fall of monarchy and the scourge of Maoists in the early part of the century. Unemployment was rising rapidly, even the regular Gorkha recruitment in Indian Army was disrupted due to the Agniveer policy introduced in the recent past. Nepal government had insisted on recruitment as per old provisions, which was not acceptable to India, being discriminatory against its own citizens. The trigger for this round of unrest was once again the banning of social media which angered the GenZ which survives and thrives in the virtual world itself. Social media, X formerly twitter, Instagram and Whats App have together become the new WMD, ‘Weapons of Mass  Disturbance and Disruption’. The GenZ is addicted to it, with rising unemployment it only gets further accentuated.The targets were typically symbols of governance, the parliament house, residences of the Prime Minister and other ministers.

Since the events are unfolding in the immediate neighbourhood, India needs to watch the developments closely. Similar experiments have been tried out here also during the orchestrated Farmer’s agitation and Shaheen Bagh protests. Farmer’s agitation was reported to have been hijacked by the Khalistani elements and ended up vandalising the Red Fort on the 26th Jan 2021. The Central Government acted with remarkable maturity and let the issue subside without resorting to any violent suppression. Violence unleashed by the governments in the case of all three, SriLanka, Bangladesh and now Nepal did not stem the tide, instead ended up adding fuel to the raging fire.

Fault lines are prevalent in all societies, as none of them is truly homogenous. Even if religion a common thread as has been the case in all these nations, be it Nepal predominantly Hindu, SriLanka Sinhalese majority and rest being Islamic countries like Bangladesh or even Egypt or Syria. The fissures are all too visible for exploitation and ripe for the picking by the vested interests. India, though a melting pot of cultures and religions with subcontinental proportions and its 1.5 billion population has many fault lines which have been targeted by our adversaries in our chequered history. Thankfully, the governments of the day have acted with maturity and tenacity to weather these storms. The reason for this, is the strength of our institutions of governance, the Judiciary, the Executive, the Legislative and the Armed Forces. As was evident even in our neighbourhood, the Armed Forces had to come to the rescue of the countries from falling into the abyss of total anarchy. As long as we are vigilant of the developments and retain the strength of these institutions, the nation is safe.