A NEW grammar of resistance is being written across South and Southeast Asia and the world is watching it unfold in real time. What began as scattered bursts of unrest has grown into a regional wave, streamed live through shaky phone cameras and shared in short, furious clips. The faces are not those of seasoned militants but of students, gig workers and delivery riders who feel their future has been stolen.
They are the ones climbing the roofs of presidential compounds in Colombo, flooding the ruins of a prime minister鈥檚 mansion in Dhaka and waving pirate flags in Kathmandu. What unites them is a sense of being cornered: jobs are scarce, opportunities are vanishing and leaders continue to enrich themselves while the majority struggles.
Sri Lanka was the first domino. In 2022, the Rajapaksa family鈥檚 grip on power collapsed under the weight of an economic meltdown that left food shelves empty and hospitals short of medicine. Then came Bangladesh, where a student uprising in 2024, triggered by a job quota system that rewarded ruling party loyalists, escalated into months of street clashes. More than 800 people were killed before Sheikh Hasina was driven from office. This year, Indonesia became the next flashpoint.
Anger had been simmering since February, when the 鈥楪elap Indonesia鈥� movement took aim at austerity measures and weakened labour protections. It exploded in August, when protests over lavish perks for lawmakers met with tear gas and armored trucks. In September, the pattern reached Nepal. A sudden ban on 26 social media platforms ignited nationwide unrest, leaving at least 74 dead in a matter of weeks and forcing prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to resign.
The similarities are not accidental. Across these countries, youth unemployment hovers around or above 20 per cent. Inflation erodes already meager wages. Corruption scandals expose leaders who funnel state wealth into offshore accounts while public services crumble. In Indonesia, price rises of just 5 per cent were enough to fuel discontent among workers already trapped in low-paid, insecure jobs.
In Nepal, the trending hashtag #nepobaby, aimed at second-generation politicians handing out contracts to their relatives, captured the anger of a generation that sees politics as a closed shop. Even Sri Lanka, two years after its Aragalaya movement toppled a dynasty, still teeters on the edge of default, with debt servicing crowding out social spending.
What makes these protests possible is the vacuum left by traditional political opposition. Once-powerful leftist movements have collapsed or compromised themselves into irrelevance. Indonesia鈥檚 left was dismantled during Suharto鈥檚 dictatorship and never rebuilt. Nepal鈥檚 Maoists, who once fought a guerrilla war against the monarchy, are now part of the very establishment they once opposed.
In Sri Lanka, socialist parties drowned themselves in ethnic nationalism, leaving bread-and-butter issues behind. Bangladesh鈥檚 fragments of the left are weak and sidelined, outflanked by religious parties and shadowy military influence. With no coherent political alternative, young people have stepped into the breach, using their phones as their organizing tools.
Social media has turned into the lifeline of this resistance. A decade ago, Twitter helped spark the Arab Spring. Today, TikTok, Instagram, and encrypted apps play the same role. In Indonesia, videos of a 22-year-old delivery rider, Affan Kurniawan, crushed under a police truck, spread across the country within hours, transforming isolated rallies into a nationwide uprising.
In Nepal, when the government tried to cut off access to Meta and X, young protesters switched to VPNs and private messaging groups. Social media here is not a distraction but the backbone of coordination, solidarity, and political expression. Dismissing this generation as screen-addled misses the point. They are the most connected group in history, and they can turn a 15-second clip into a rallying cry.
Violence often begins not with the protesters but with the state. Sri Lankan security forces fired into fuel queues, radicalising ordinary citizens who had simply been waiting for petrol. In Bangladesh, police and paramilitary forces opened fire on student marches, filling university campuses with bodies. In Indonesia, women marched with pink banners and brooms after police beat protesters, demanding an end to the brutality. In Nepal, the first protests were almost festive 鈥� students handed out water bottles, volunteers organized clean-up crews, and children waved flags. Then police rifles opened fire and the tone shifted overnight. Dozens died at the gates of parliament, and what had been a hopeful demonstration became a bitter confrontation with a corrupt political order.
Attempts at censorship only make things worse. Nepal鈥檚 blackout, meant to choke off the #nepobaby campaign, sent more young people into the streets. Indonesia leaned on TikTok to pull livestreams, but clips smuggled out on WhatsApp kept the protests alive. Governments blame 鈥榝oreign hands,鈥� accusing India or the United States of stirring unrest. Yet the real causes are domestic: years of graft, inequality, and elite arrogance. Just as Tunisia鈥檚 Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in 2010, igniting the Arab Spring, the image of Affan鈥檚 bloodied helmet in Jakarta has become a symbol that refuses to fade.
The parallels with the Arab Spring are haunting. That earlier wave of uprisings carried enormous hope but often ended in despair. Egypt slid from revolution into dictatorship. Libya dissolved into chaos. Syria turned into a nightmare of war and displacement. Without strong institutions, popular rage consumed itself and opened the door to military juntas and extremists. South and Southeast Asia now face the same risk. In Bangladesh, the fall of Hasina has left a vacuum. In Nepal, the interim government has no clear mandate. In Indonesia, president Prabowo 鈥� himself a figure from the Suharto era 鈥攃onfronts a restless public, and his policies have only added fuel to the fire.
Yet, there is also something new here. This generation has studied past failures and is determined not to repeat them. They do not place their hopes in strongmen or singular heroes. Instead, they build horizontal networks: encrypted chat groups, decentralized collectives, viral petitions. Symbols like the pirate flag borrowed from Japanese manga mock the self-importance of political elites. Demands are also sharper.
Nepal鈥檚 students are not just asking for resignations but for structural change: transparent procurement rules, digital rights and youth quotas in governance. Indonesian feminists link their economic struggle with gender justice, pointing out how austerity hits women hardest. These movements see politics not as a spectacle of elections but as something lived and reshaped every day.
For the outside world, this 鈥楢sian Spring鈥� cannot be dismissed as local turbulence. These countries sit along vital sea lanes and are embedded in global supply chains that feed everything from consumer electronics to fast fashion. Instability here will not remain contained. It will spill into migration flows, financial markets and security vacuums. Western capitals, however, have a long record of responding to such crises by backing authoritarian strongmen in the name of stability. That response only deepens the problem. Supporting regimes that brutalize their citizens creates more Bouazizis, more Affans, more sparks waiting to ignite.
A different approach is needed. Rather than treating these uprisings as threats to be managed, outside powers could support the demands already voiced by young people: independent media, debt relief, and safe pathways for exiled activists. This would not mean imposing solutions but amplifying those already taking shape on the ground. The future of South and Southeast Asia is being contested in streets and squares right now. Ignoring that reality, or clinging to outdated habits of propping up the powerful, is not just short-sighted but dangerous.
The message from Colombo, Dhaka, Jakarta, and Kathmandu is stark. Young people feel they have been robbed of their future and they are no longer willing to wait quietly. They are tearing down the old scripts and writing new ones in real time. Whether their movements harden into sustainable change or collapse into chaos will shape not only their countries but the wider world. The choice is not theirs alone. It is also in the hands of those who choose either to listen or to look away.
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Dr Imran Khalid is a freelance contributor from Karachi.
