Nepal’s Age of Ressentiment: Mishra’s Analysis of Crisis

Part I: The Architecture of Anger: Unpacking Pankaj Mishra’s Thesis

1.1 Introduction: Beyond the “Clash of Civilizations”

Pankaj Mishra’s 2017 book, Age of Anger: A History of the Present, serves as a powerful diagnostic tool for the contemporary global crisis of political and social unrest. The text provides a genealogy of the violent disaffection sweeping the globe, from ISIS-inspired terrorism to the rise of Hindu chauvinism in India and right-wing populism in the West.

Mishra’s primary intervention is the rejection of simplistic binaries, such as the “clash of civilizations” framework, which posits a fundamental conflict between “Islam” and “the West,” or “religion” and “reason”. Instead, he argues that these disparate angers are not in conflict but are cognate pathologies. They stem from a common intellectual and political tradition as old as the Enlightenment itself. This framework challenges the complacent Western self-perception of a peaceful, rational convergence toward liberal democracy. Mishra insists that the historical process of “modernisation,” far from being orderly, “is largely one of carnage and bedlam”.

1.2 The Genealogy of Ressentiment

The central theoretical concept in Mishra’s analysis is ressentiment. This term, borrowed from Nietzsche, is not merely the French word for resentment. It is defined as a far deeper, more toxic pathology: “an existential resentment of other people’s being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness”.

Mishra traces the origin of this modern affliction to the 18th-century Enlightenment and specifically to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau was the first to identify how the rise of a secular, commercial, and meritocratic society would, paradoxically, breed a toxic “vanity”. In this new social order, individuals, freed from the hierarchies of tradition, come to live for the recognition and esteem of others. When this recognition is denied—as it inevitably is for the vast majority—this vanity “nourishes in the soul a dislike of one’s own self while stoking impotent hatred of others”.

This ressentiment is not an external force attacking modernity; it is an autoimmune disease generated by modernity itself. As the German sociologist Max Scheler argued, it festers precisely in societies where formal social equality coexists with “massive differences in power, education, status, and property ownership”. It is the gap between the universal promise of individual empowerment, freedom, and prosperity and the reality of a “grotesquely unequal” capitalist society that “poisons civil society and undermines political liberty”.

1.3 Modernization as “Carnage”: The Failures of the Liberal Promise

In Mishra’s historical view, the 19th-century European experience with modernization—which produced waves of messianic nationalism, anarchism, and nihilistic violence—was not an aberration but a preview of what the rest of the world would endure. Through imperialism and, later, globalization, this “Western-dominated global order” was universalized.

Globalization, in this analysis, is a “ruthless search for profit” that has shattered traditional social solidarities. It has left in its wake “vast masses of atomised individuals”, creating the central tragic figure of the modern age: the individual “uprooted from tradition but far from modernity”. This person is burdened with what Mishra terms an “intolerable burden of freedom”, liberated from the old world but denied entry into the new, left to spectate at the prosperity of a global elite.

1.4 The Political Pathologies of the “Uprooted”

This atomized, humiliated, and “spiritually disorientated” mass becomes fertile ground for the political pathologies that define the “age of anger.”

• Demagoguery: The uprooted are “increasingly susceptible to demagogues and their simplifications”. These leaders appeal directly to the “desires and prejudices of the people”, offering a “comfortable social narrative” that channels their ressentiment toward clear villains—”immigrants, minorities and various designated ‘others'”—while promising to “make a country ‘great again'”.
• Nihilism and Violence: For those most disaffected, ressentiment fuels an “unfocused fury and self-empowerment through spectacular violence”. It is a “nihilistic impulse to punish the elites, to blow up the system”, which connects the 19th-century Russian anarchist to the contemporary terrorist.
• Authoritarianism: The ultimate result of this instability is a “global turn to authoritarianism and toxic forms of chauvinism”. The “fragile self” of the modern individual, unmoored and alienated, seeks refuge in the destructive simplicities of tribalism.

1.5 Critiques and Scope: A Diagnostic, Not Prescriptive, Tool

This analysis must proceed with a clear understanding of the limitations of Mishra’s framework. Critics have noted his reliance on Ideengeschichte (a history of ideas), a method that can risk treating “big-name” thinkers as “representatives of wider historical trends” and may select historical examples to fit a pre-existing argument. Furthermore, his “almost total neglect of Marxism” as a historical alternative and critique of the liberal order is a significant omission.

Crucially, Mishra “leaves readers with a dire diagnosis — not a recommended treatment”. His stated purpose is “to locate” the problem in its historical context, not to offer a political or economic solution. Therefore, this report will employ Age of Anger as a diagnostic framework to understand the emotional and psychological history of Nepal’s cyclical crises, not as a policy manual to resolve them.

Part II: A History of the Past: The Maoist Insurgency as Nepal’s First Age of Anger

Mishra’s thesis of ressentiment provides a powerful lens to re-examine the 1996–2006 Nepalese Civil War. The insurgency was not an anomaly but a textbook manifestation of Mishra’s framework: a violent explosion of ressentiment from a population “uprooted” and “disfranchised” by a failed, top-down modernization project—in this case, the 1990 democratic transition.

2.1 The Failed Promise of 1990: The Jana Andolan and its Discontents

The 1990 Jana Andolan (People’s Movement) was Nepal’s “Enlightenment” moment. It dismantled the 30-year autocratic Panchayat system, which had “banned political parties, curtailed civil liberties, and concentrated power in the monarchy,” and ushered in an era of constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy. This was the liberal promise of freedom, equality, and representation.

This promise, however, was almost immediately betrayed. The new democratic space rapidly devolved into a volatile landscape of “unstable coalition governments” and “intra-party conflicts”. More critically, it became a “winner-take-all majoritarian democracy” that “marginalized smaller parties and minority groups, hindering inclusive representation”. This political dynamic became the perfect incubator for ressentiment. It created the classic contradiction Mishra identifies: a formal promise of political equality and inclusion coexisting with a reality of elite capture and the profound alienation of “ideological and cultural minorities”.

2.2 The Ressentiment of the Excluded: “Structural Violence” and Horizontal Inequalities

The anger that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) harvested was not abstract; it was rooted in generations of systemic humiliation. As analysts have noted, pre-war Nepal suffered from extremely high levels of “structural violence”. This concept, derived from Johan Galtung, describes “domination, exploitation, deprivation, and humiliation that emanate from societal structures”, specifically the entrenched hierarchies of caste, ethnicity (Janajati), gender, and region.

These “horizontal inequalities”—where one’s group identity predetermined one’s life chances and access to resources—were the “grotesquely unequal society” that the 1990 democracy failed to address. The Maoists did not create this ressentiment; they channeled it. They offered a totalizing ideology that transformed this “intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness” into a coherent political and military program.

2.3 The “Uprooted” Peasantry and Economic Despair

The economic dimension was inseparable from the political. Nepal in the 1990s remained a “predominantly an agrarian society”. The peasantry and rural poor were trapped in a state of profound anomie. They were “uprooted from tradition” (a dying feudalism) “but far from modernity”, as the benefits of “development” were hoarded by the Kathmandu elite. The state, rather than responding with reform, economic inclusion, or land rights, responded with “harsh crackdowns,” such as Operation Kilo Serra II, which “pushed even more villagers into the Maoist fold”. The insurgency became the only viable path for a population that felt “actively victimized rather than simply ‘left behind’ by an expansionist capitalism”.

2.4 The “People’s War” as Channeled Rage

The CPN (Maoist) initiated its “People’s War” on February 13, 1996, with the explicit purpose of “overthrowing the Nepali monarchy and establishing a people’s republic”. This was a clear act of “self-empowerment through spectacular violence”, as Mishra describes. The Maoists, like the 19th-century “angry young men” Mishra profiles, successfully channeled the “unfocused fury” of the masses against the ultimate symbol of the old, exclusionary order.

The war’s conclusion in 2006, formalized by the Comprehensive Peace Accord, led directly to the abolition of the 240-year-old monarchy. This was a direct, tangible victory for the forces of ressentiment. However, this victory was pyrrhic.

The movement had successfully destroyed the target of its anger—the King—but it had not resolved the source of the anger: the underlying “structural violence,” economic despair, and culture of elite impunity. The ressentiment, being “insatiable”, merely went dormant, awaiting new targets.

Mishra’s Own Commentary: The “Temptations” and the “Return of Mao”

Pankaj Mishra himself has specifically analyzed Nepal’s insurgency through this lens. His 2006 book, Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond, includes a dedicated chapter titled “Nepal: The ‘People’s War'”. While some reviewers at the time found the chapter “tacked on”, its inclusion demonstrates his early identification of the insurgency as a critical symptom of failed modernization in South Asia.

In a 2011 article, Mishra was even more explicit. He cited the Nepali Maoists’ success in overthrowing the monarchy as a primary example of the “return” of Mao’s ideology. He argued that Mao’s blueprint for armed rebellion “appears to speak more directly to many people in poor countries” who feel “actively victimized” by a globalized, expansionist capitalism that had failed to deliver on its promises.

A History of the Present: The 2025 Gen Z Revolt and the “Nepobaby” Ressentiment

The September 2025 “Gen Z” protests, which toppled the government of KP Sharma Oli, are not a new phenomenon. They are the cyclical, mutated, and digitally-accelerated expression of the same unresolved ressentiment that fueled the Maoist war. The “enemy” has simply shifted from the feudal monarchy to the new “political establishment” that betrayed the promises of the 2006 revolution.

The Betrayed Promise of 2006: From “People’s War” to Elite Capture

The post-2006 era, culminating in the 2015 Constitution and the establishment of a federal republic, was Nepal’s second liberal promise. This, too, was betrayed. The former Maoist rebels entered mainstream politics, but “popular disillusionment with broken promises” quickly set in. The “old guard”—the very centrist and UML parties discredited in the 1990s—”rapidly regained their support base”, bolstered by entrenched patronage networks.

This resulted in a rebellion against the rebels. The “angry young men” of the 1990s had been absorbed into the elite, becoming the new, corrupt establishment. The political class calcified into a new oligarchy. As noted in analysis of the 2025 crisis, the two largest and historically opposed parties, the UML and Nepali Congress, entered a power-sharing arrangement widely perceived “to shield themselves from corruption investigations”. This represented the ultimate “mystification” of politics, confirming the public’s worst fears that the system was a “game of musical chairs” run by a “mafia”.

The New “Uprooted”: Educated, Unemployed, and Online

The protagonists of this new Age of Anger are “Generation Z students and young citizens”. They are the 2025-model of Mishra’s “uprooted.” They are “digitally active”, politically aware, and “inherited a democracy their grandparents fought for”. They possess the modern language of rights and accountability.

But their material reality is one of “economic despair”. They face the classic ressentiment-breeding contradiction:

• The Promise: Education, digital freedom, global connection.
• The Reality: Youth unemployment exceeds 20%. The economy is a “remittance trap”, with nearly a third of the population working abroad and a staggering 82% of the domestic workforce in informal employment. This is Mishra’s “intolerable burden of freedom”: the freedom to choose between unemployment at home or migration abroad.

The “Nepobaby” Phenomenon: Ressentiment in the Digital Age

The 2025 protests were catalyzed by a specific, modern form of humiliation: the “nepobaby” phenomenon. Protesters were galvanized by what they saw as the “offspring of well-known politicians” who “flaunt their wealth and lavish lifestyles” online.

This is not simple jealousy; it is the perfect 21st-century symbol of ressentiment. It is Rousseau’s “vanity” and Mishra’s “existential resentment of other people’s being” made manifest for three reasons:

• It mocks “merit”: Their success is visibly unearned, a direct assault on the core “meritocratic” promise of a modern, democratic society.
• It is inescapable: Their lifestyles are “flaunted” on the same digital platforms the unemployed youth use, creating a constant, unavoidable, and intimate source of humiliation.
• It confirms elite capture: The “nepobabies” represent the fusion of political and economic power, proving the system is a closed “mafia” where “political connections often matter more than merit”.

The government’s ban on 26 social media platforms on September 4 was the spark precisely because it was seen as an attempt by this corrupt elite to blind the humiliated, to cut off the very tool they were using to articulate their ressentiment and organize their dissent.

The Spark and the Fuel: From Social Media Ban to Systemic Rot

The protest against the ban “morphed into the all-out exposure of… decades of systemic corruption and a complete breakdown of trust”. The target was no longer a single policy but the “entire political establishment”.

The result was an explosion of what Mishra, citing Hannah Arendt, calls a “structureless mass of furious individuals”. This was not an organized “People’s War”; it was a spontaneous, digitally-organized mass uprising. The ensuing riots, which saw government buildings, including the parliament and Supreme Court, set ablaze, were a visceral expression of the “nihilistic impulse to punish the elites, to blow up the system”. The rage, unchanneled by a coherent ideology, became “irrepressible… to hurt or destroy”.

A Cycle of Anger: 1996 and 2025 as Two Faces of Ressentiment

The 2025 Gen Z revolt is the urban, digital heir to the rural, analog anger of 1996. The cycle of ressentiment is accelerating: it took over 30 years of post-Panchayat exclusion to fuel the Maoist war; it took only 17 years of post-monarchy “democratic” failure to fuel the next one. The following table provides a direct comparative analysis of these two cycles through Mishra’s framework.

Table 1: Manifestations of Ressentiment in Nepal: A Comparative Analysis

Analytical Vector (from Mishra’s Thesis)	Phase I: The Maoist Insurgency	Phase II: The “Gen Z” Revolt
Affected Population (The “Uprooted”)	Rural peasantry, Janajati (ethnic groups), Dalits, women. “Uprooted from tradition (feudalism)”.	Urban/peri-urban youth, students, educated-but-unemployed, digitally-native “Generation Z”. “Uprooted from (failed) expectations.”
Source of Ressentiment (Humiliation)	“Structural violence”: Systemic caste, ethnic, and gender-based exclusion. Political alienation from the “winner-take-all” 1990 democracy.	“Systemic rot”: Pervasive corruption, bribery, and nepotism. The “Nepobaby” phenomenon: Flaunted, visible, unearned privilege.
Failed “Modern” Promise	The 1990 Jana Andolan (People’s Movement) and multiparty democracy. The promise of inclusion and representation.	The 2006 Comprehensive Peace Accord and the 2015 Federal Constitution. The promise of a “New Nepal,” peace dividend, and an end to corruption.
Expression of Anger / Pathology	Protracted, organized “People’s War”. Guerrilla warfare. Creation of parallel “people’s governments”. (Mishra’s “messianic revolutionaries”).	Spontaneous, digitally-organized mass uprising. Riots, arson, vandalism of state symbols (parliament, courts). (Mishra’s “structureless mass of furious individuals”).
Primary Target of Anger	The Monarchy. The “feudal” state and its symbols.	The entire post-2006 political establishment. The “old guard” (NC, UML), corrupt elites, and symbols of the democratic state.

The Future of Anger: Federalism, Demagoguery, and the 2026 Election

The 2025 uprising has left Nepal in a perilous interregnum. The ressentiment that toppled the Oli government has not been resolved; it has merely been expressed. Having failed twice to resolve the root causes of this humiliation, Nepal is now in a pre-authoritarian phase, as described by Mishra. The 2026 election, slated for March, will not be a simple democratic exercise; it will be a flashpoint, a market for demagogues offering competing “cures” for this national ressentiment.

The Interregnum: A State of Unstable Equilibrium

The protests of September 2025 dissolved parliament and forced the appointment of an interim government under former Chief Justice Sushila Karki. This is a moment of profound political and economic vacuum. Investor confidence has “evaporated”, and growth projections have collapsed. In this state of uncertainty, Mishra’s thesis warns that ressentiment metastasizes, “poisoning civil society” as the nation searches for a path forward.

Future Dangers : The Poisoning of Federalism and Social Cohesion

Mishra’s framework predicts that this unresolved anger will attack the very institutions designed to manage it. In Nepal, this poison is targeting two critical pillars.

First is Federalism. The 2015 Constitution’s federal structure was the technical solution designed to cure the structural exclusion and “horizontal inequalities” that caused the Maoist war. It was, in effect, a cure for ressentiment. But this cure is being “poisoned” by ressentiment itself.”

The federal system is failing, hindered by “inadequate resources” and, most importantly, “resistance to genuine power-sharing” from a central government “driven by a desire for control and power consolidation”. The ressentiment of the Kathmandu elite against ceding its power and “being” to the periphery is destroying the one institution that could have addressed the ressentiment of the periphery. This creates an insoluble feedback loop, guaranteeing future conflict.

Second is Social Cohesion

The 2025 crisis, born from decades of failed promises, has deepened “social rifts”. The “digital divide”, economic shocks, and “universal irritability of everybody against everybody else” are eroding Nepal’s “bonding and bridging social capital”.

4.3 Future Dangers : The Scramble for Demagogues

The 2025 revolt created a total power vacuum by delegitimizing the entire post-2006 political class. An “atomised mass of furious individuals” is now “vulnerable to a despotic leader” who can offer a “simplification”. The 2026 election is poised to become a bidding war for Nepal’s ressentiment, with two distinct “demagogue” models emerging from the data:

• A) The Modernist Demagogue (The Technocratic Strongman): This path is represented by the burgeoning calls for a “directly elected executive head”. This is a populist rejection of the “failed” parliamentary system, which is blamed for instability and “horse-trading”. Backers envision a “strong,” “young,” and “clean” executive, like Kathmandu’s popular mayor Balen Shah, who can “efficiently” bypass the corrupt legislature. In Mishra’s terms, this is a classic “authoritarian turn”, a technocratic fantasy that a single charismatic leader can solve the deep psychological and structural ills of the nation.
• B) The Reactionary Demagogue (The “Toxic Chauvinist”): This path is represented by the “royalist revival”. This movement, whose slogan is “Raja aau, desh bachau” (Come king, save the country), is pure “nostalgia for a system that was no less broken”. It channels ressentiment against the entire 18-year “failed” democratic experiment and, in some cases, links it to a broader Hindu nationalist identity. This is the purest form of Mishra’s thesis: the “attempts to recapture a lost golden age” and the embrace of “toxic forms of chauvinism” as a balm for present-day humiliation.

4.4 Conclusion: Beyond the Cycle of Anger

As Nepal looks toward 2026, it is trapped between two forms of demagoguery, both of which are, as Mishra writes, “a mystification”. Neither the technocratic strongman nor the reactionary king offers a “transformative way of thinking” capable of addressing the root causes of Nepal’s ressentiment. They merely offer to channel the anger, not to resolve the humiliation.

Nepal’s 2025 uprising is a regional warning, mirroring the crises in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It proves that in South Asia, political stability cannot be decoupled from economic security and, most fundamentally, from dignity.

Pankaj Mishra offers no solution; he warns that “the future is up to us”. Nepal’s political and economic uncertainty is likely to continue. Its future hinges on whether the 2026 election can, for the first time, produce a political class that moves beyond managing patronage and corruption to finally address the “decades of systemic rot” and persistent rural inequalities that are the source of its national humiliation.

If it fails, Mishra’s framework predicts an inevitable and tragic outcome. The ressentiment will linger, and Nepal’s “age of anger” will simply await its next, perhaps even more violent, expression.