'College-going Gen Z students are devastated by the killings and destruction.'
'These are not the kind of people who would burn somebody's home or beat up political leaders or set fire to people and snatch guns from the policemen.'
'So obviously a huge infiltration has happened.'
"The Gen Z movement has fundamentally changed our perception about stability and peace. They want to build the nation and this fundamental change has happened overnight," Kathmandu-based academic and writer Dinesh Kafle tells Rediff's Archana Masih in an interview recorded on Thursday night.
You wrote in your column Barbarians at the Barricades in The Kathmadu Post that 'for the barbarians at the top, no barrel of the gun has ever been built as powerful as the hearts of the people seeking justice. And to retain our power as citizens of this nation, the fight must go on.'
So, I wanted to ask you: How must this fight continue?
We have reached a very complicated situation. There are three power centres in Nepal now.
Gen Z is the new power centre, but it is fast losing that power because they couldn't come together to take charge right away.
Political Parties which are now making a comeback.
The leaders that had run away are slowly appearing online. On the second-third day of the violence, they came through Facebook and then via videos. Now they are doing Zoom meetings.
Within the next four or five days, they will come out with a joint statement. Individual political parties have also started making their own statements about how to move forward.
The Army is also trying to consolidate power, but knows its limitations because it functions under the democratic government.
In Nepal, the army has never harboured any dreams of becoming as powerful as the Pakistani army. It follows the Indian army doctrine where it remains under the government.
The Nepali army has never revolted against the democratically elected government in the country's history.
All these three elements are slowly realising their own limited power.
They are also negotiating with others to gain more control. A tripartite power dynamics is going on right now.
What options are there for Gen Z? They had a press conference where they have said they want some changes in the constitution. What is the way forward? How can they sustain the movement?
Their concerns will be incorporated in the negotiations and dialogues from now on, at least for the time being. But all the issues raised by them will not be incorporated because their demands are extremely high, such as having a single authority prime ministerial system and doing away with the entire parliamentary system.
Changing the constitution is a long process and will not happen.
I support Gen Z fully, but I fought for our constitution for ten years from 2005 to 2015. I went on the streets to get that constitution and I'm not going to let that constitution be dissolved or refreshed.
Everybody will come out on the streets to fight and it will backfire.
But the question right now is whether Gen Z has a singular, unanimous, voice on how to move forward and what they really want.
As it stands today, there is no clear roadmap as to how things are going to move ahead.
Gen Z gave a statement that the vandalism, destruction, burning of hotels, buildings of such historical value was not done by them. Has the movement been infiltrated by monarchists or others to provoke trouble?
It's becoming increasingly clear that the royalists were behind the vandalism.
The royalists had been speaking against these institutions, companies, merchants and industrialists.
The industrialists who were previously targeted by the royalists are now the ones whose properties have been burned down. It's obvious that the royalists have infiltrated the movement and played a significant role.
In fact, it seems that at least 95% of the vandalism was led by them. They knew exactly where the politicians' houses were, which strongly suggests premeditated coordination.
College-going Gen Z students are devastated by the killings and destruction. These are not the kind of people who would burn somebody's home or beat up political leaders or set fire to people and snatch guns from the policemen.
I teach at a university and I know my students. None of them could snatch a policeman's rifle. Not unless they are politically indoctrinated because that kind of power and aggression comes from experience and from within their own souls.
So obviously a huge infiltration has happened and Gen Z knows that their movement has been hijacked.
What next in Nepal? What do you expect to happen in terms of government?
Any prediction doesn't work in moments like these. But I can clearly see that these three power centres will be in negotiation in the next couple of days in terms of how much power one can cede to the other and how much one can absorb.
It is going to be a power tussle. A tripartite power balance is going on.
I can't see a very clear picture and I can't see a lot of hope either because ultimately democracy is a subject of negotiation. Nobody has the absolute power to change things.
I would advise that everybody come together and sit at the table and negotiate a way forward.
Has democracy been severely undermined and could it give former king Gyanendra and his supporters an opportunity to grab power?
That won't happen. Nepal formally left Gyanendra behind in 2008 and people are in no mood to accept his return as king. Even Gyanendra himself is not confident about coming back. People will not allow his return.
Although there might be some incidents of violence and protests to bring him back. But democracy itself is not in danger in Nepal. Democracy does go through turbulence time to time, but we will sail through.
That's very certain because Nepalese are now used to living under democracy and will not let it fall into the hands of the royalists or the army.
There's no apparent danger to democracy.
The Nepalese were not scared about taking to the streets in 2005-2006 to fight for democracy when there was no social media and limited backing from the international community.
Today, if democracy is threatened, people like us will come out again. Gen Z will rise up. Democracy being taken back from us is neither acceptable nor is it possible. We will not allow it.
How has this movement changed Nepal?
It has fundamentally changed our perception about stability and peace. Youngsters who had wanted to go abroad are planning to stay back and fight the next elections. They want to build the nation.
This fundamental change has happened overnight and I'm very hopeful that Nepal will be built back better.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff