Social media’s role is not confined only to the three latest uprisings in South Asia. It goes back at least 15 years earlier to Tunisia
The recent uprising in Nepal and two earlier ones in India’s neighbourhood over the last four years have understandably triggered a myriad of questions, some bordering on conspiracy theories. Who were behind these popular upsurges? Why were there no visible leaders? Were they really spontaneous? Can this happen in India, etc, etc.
The uprisings seemed almost choreographed. The incumbent governments, security forces, and intelligence services of all three countries – Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka – were caught napping. State superstructures that had seemed impregnable crumbled overnight in front of a stupefied population. Prime ministers and presidents, elected or otherwise, fell like nine pins. They were truly the stuff of Hollywood.
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When social media steers revolutions
Though it has been mentioned in passing, the elephant in the room is social media. This was the key thread linking the three uprisings. Social media’s role is not confined only to the three latest uprisings in South Asia. It goes back at least 15 years to Tunisia, when it was just starting to expand. The entire upsurge in the Arab world, back in 2010/11, was triggered and fanned specifically by Facebook (or, Meta as it is called now).
Recall the self-immolation of a vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, in Tunisia, on December 17, 2010, protesting against police harassment. It happened in the peripheral town of Sidi Bouzid. None, initially, took it seriously. It was par for the course that was the nature of politics in that country, ruled by a dictatorial president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, for 24 years. A group of youngsters, or Gen X, filmed the incident on mobile and shared it on Facebook. They had little idea of what they had done.
How Tunisia fought back
Their intention was not to start a revolution, but the incident was deemed worth shareable and they did. They did not expect the response the video generated. The self-immolation was so moving, and reeked of injustice, that spirited individuals and many others in other parts of the country seething under the authoritarian system, protested.
Hundreds, nay thousands, shared the same view and came out into the streets to protest. None of this was pre-planned, conspired, and organised. It just happened, like magic – one day there was nothing, the next day there were widespread protests. No wonder the tightly-run Tunisian state was caught unaware. Before the security forces could regroup and take back control, it was all over.
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The protests had spread. Each city was looking at what was happening in other cities and towns, gathering courage. People spilled out onto the streets. The flood of resentment, before long, shook the state apparatus.
Where mob is the master
In traditional protests, often organised by political outfits, governments generally tend to identify the leaders, talk to them and convince them to call off their agitation – in any manner possible including sweet-talking, arm-twisting or outright co-option.
But, in the Tunisian case, in the absence of any leadership, who could the government talk to? There was none – it was everybody and nobody. The protests were akin to natural floods where the rushing waters take along with them properties, infrastructure, vehicles, people – no privileges here. The flood of protests washed away the Ben Ali government.
Inspired by the Tunisian uprising, in the neighbouring Egyptian capital Cairo, 26-year-old female activist Asmaa Mahfouz sent a message on Facebook asking her friends to gather in the city’s Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, a few days before the National Police Day, to oppose the Mubarak government. To her surprise, at the appointed time, she found hundreds had gathered there and more were pouring in. Her post on Facebook had been organically re-shared hundreds of times and had gone viral.
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Egyptian, Syrian uprisings followed same model
President Hosni Mubarak had been entrenched in power for over three decades, with no mercy for any opposition. Elections were routinely rigged, and the secret service was ruthlessly active, creating a hopeless situation for common people. Their bottled-up frustration and resentment were visible that day in Tahrir Square.
The gathered crowd discovered strength in numbers, and there was no looking back. All of this was dutifully shared on Facebook, which in turn inspired more to join. And, before long, Tunisia repeated itself in Egypt until a shocked government was shoved out of power in a matter of days. Mubarak fled, scared for his life.
Social media similarly played a huge role in the Syrian uprising, when news of the arrest and torture of a group of school children in the town of Dara’a spread across the country. They had been caught drawing anti-government graffiti on the public walls of the town. Massive protests followed. The security forces attempted to snuff it out ruthlessly. This turned the protests into a civil war that lasted over a decade, eventually seeing the back of President Bashar al-Assad and his government, along with the rest of the state apparatus.
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How regimes crumbled in South Asia
Closer home, news of the intense everyday struggle of the Sri Lankan people during the economic crisis of 2022 spread quickly through the Internet. The government, in a knee-jerk reaction, banned social media, but it lasted just under a day. But the damage was done. And before long, mass protests engulfed the country, leading to the fall of the Rajapaksas.
Then came the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh, whose decision to put down protests violently backfired. A young student, Abu Sayed, was shot dead by the police in front of his university, and this video circulating on social media was enough to galvanise mass protests leading to Hasina’s exit – ignominiously fleeing the country in a helicopter.
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And, the latest was of course Nepal, where children of the ruling elite, the so-called ‘Nepo kids’ scored a self-goal by displaying their allegedly ill-gotten wealth on social media. The KP Sharma Oli government, in desperation, banned social media. But it proved counter-productive, providing the tipping point for the mass protests to turn against him.
Social media appears to have turned a new page on political movements, revolutions, uprisings, and the character of political power. It’s like a genie let out of the bottle. Classical political theory needs to be revisited to incorporate this new reality. Any government anywhere can be the target. It is, however, not clear what the tipping point could be, and that makes the situation daunting for governments.
Flip side of rebellions
But the flip side of all the social media-triggered uprisings is that once the incumbent government exits, there’s typically an element of confusion over the next course of action.
In the case of the Arab world, the protests tended to fracture tightly-controlled authoritarian political structures, leading to unpredictable consequences. The protests sparked a prolonged civil war in Syria and violence-laced anarchy in Libya. In the case of Egypt, after a short period of genuine opening up, a military coup reversed the gains of the uprising. It turned into authoritarianism under a veneer of democracy, not very different from the earlier Mubarak regime.
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In the case of Sri Lanka, the democratic political system survived with a change in government as the sole outcome. In Bangladesh, it is still a work in progress – the student leaders are demanding deeper changes, including in the Constitution. Nepal, after initial fears, appears to have settled down to a new government, with the Constitution intact. Amendments, however, cannot be ruled out.
