Kathmandu, Nepal – Going through 1000’s of raucous supporters, 35-year-old Balendra Shah lifted his signature black rectangular sun shades, requested his viewers to look him within the eye, and stated: “I like you.”
It’s a sentiment that hundreds of thousands of younger Nepalis seem to reciprocate.
Balen – as he’s popularly recognized – was a no person till 2013, when he virtually in a single day grew to become a rap sensation. Almost a decade later, in Could 2022, he surprised Nepal’s deeply entrenched mainstream political events by successful the publish of mayor of Kathmandu, the nation’s capital, whereas contesting as an unbiased.
When the Himalayan nation of 30 million folks erupted in widespread protests towards the federal government of then-Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli in September 2025, Balen emerged as a high-profile backer of the protesters. He was the primary alternative of many Gen Z activists to take over as interim chief after Oli was pressured to resign. However he as a substitute supported former Supreme Court docket Chief Justice Sushila Karki for the publish. It’s now that this was a tactical transfer.
As Nepal heads to its first election for the reason that protests final 12 months, and Karki’s temporary time period ends, Balen is positioning himself as the long run prime minister the nation wants. And true to type, he’s doing it with a bang: He’s contesting the parliamentary elections from Jhapa-5, a seat about 300km (186 miles) southeast of Kathmandu, towards Oli, the person protesters deposed simply 5 months in the past.
On the floor, the chances seem stacked towards him. The area is a stronghold of Oli and the Communist Social gathering of Nepal – Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), which the previous prime minister heads. Balen is contesting as a candidate of the Rastriya Swatantra Social gathering (RSP), a centrist occasion fashioned lower than 4 years in the past, which received 10 p.c of the nationwide vote within the final elections in 2022.
Balen’s risky public communication – he has abused mainstream events, India, China and the USA, and threatened to burn down symbols of energy in Nepal – has sparked criticism and questions over whether or not he’s prepared for prime workplace.
However Balen defied the pundits when he received the Kathmandu mayoralty. And observers and analysts say that for a lot of Nepalis, he represents a breath of contemporary air in a rustic the place greater than 40 p.c of the inhabitants is beneath the age of 35, however the place the management of all main events is in its 70s.
“Younger Nepalis see him as a decisive actor, who will not be beholden to conventional political or enterprise pursuits,” Pranaya Rana, a journalist who writes for the Kalam Weekly e-newsletter, instructed Al Jazeera. “Many admire his macho public persona and his willingness to tackle entrenched political patronage networks.”
The craze
If younger Nepal burned with anger in September, when protesters clashed with safety forces and attacked senior politicians after a crackdown by authorities beneath Oli, Balen was nonetheless seething with rage two months later.
In a midnight publish on Fb in November, he lashed out: “F*** America, F*** India, F*** China, F*** UML, F*** Congress, F*** RSP, F*** RPP, F*** Maobaadi. You Guys all Mixed can do nothing”, venting towards the favored political events and even nations which have shut ties to Nepal. Being the Kathmandu mayor on the time, he deleted the publish lower than half an hour later.
Then in January, he stop as mayor and joined the RSP, one of many events he cursed within the Fb publish. Extra lately, after Oli known as on Fb for a public debate amongst prime ministerial candidates of main events, Balen rejected the suggestion and requested the ex-prime minister to take accountability for the handfuls of civilians killed throughout the Gen Z protests in September. He requested Oli to acknowledge that he was a “terrorist”.
Excessive? To not many Nepalis.
The rapper-turned-politician’s confrontational type and rhetoric seem to have solely endeared him to giant sections of the youth. His beard and dandy, all-black clothes type – he sometimes wears the standard Newari gown of the ethnic inhabitants of the Kathmandu valley – coupled along with his trademark darkish glasses, have turn out to be trend symbols.
Kathmandu outlets as soon as ran out of the sort of black rectangular glasses he wears. Many on-line shops, together with Daraz, the most well-liked vendor in Nepal, nonetheless carry a number of decisions of those shades, calling them “Balen Shah glasses”.
Not like conventional politicians, Balen primarily stays away from mainstream media. As a substitute, he communicates with the broader public by means of podcasts, tv reveals the place he’s a choose, or by means of his favorite platform: social media. His 3.5 million followers on Fb, 1 million on Instagram, 400,000 on X and practically 1 million on YouTube give him a web based viewers unmatched in Nepal.
That is beneficial capital with a technology continually on their telephones.
But Balen first made waves not as a politician, however as an upstart musician who shook Nepal.
Massive vehicles, larger songs
The youngest of 4 siblings, Balen was born in 1990 in Kathmandu. Balen’s father, Ram Narayan Shah – who handed away in December – was a authorities practitioner of ayurveda, the traditional Hindu therapeutic system.
In an interview with Al Jazeera in September – three months earlier than his loss of life – Shah recalled Balen as a “shiny and easy” little one. The daddy’s work took him away from house regularly, however one clear reminiscence from Balen’s childhood caught out for Shah: “He wrote poems. I keep in mind that, as a result of I additionally wrote poems.”
Balen graduated with a civil engineering diploma from Himalayan Whitehouse Worldwide Faculty in Kathmandu and obtained a postgraduate diploma in structural engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological College (VTU) in Karnataka, India.
Then, in 2013, he engineered his first main profession transition. The setting was a well-liked rap battle in Nepal, known as Uncooked Barz, wherein two contestants face-off reside towards one another. One of many organisers of the competitors, who requested anonymity, instructed Al Jazeera that Yama Buddha, a well-liked rapper who has since handed away, really useful Balen to him.
Balen received the rap battle, gaining prompt recognition. “Greater than a rapper, he was a poet. He was superb lyrically, and talked about suppressed [people],” the competition organiser recalled.
In 2021, Shah introduced his candidature for the mayoral election and revealed that he had been plotting the run for at the least two years. He swept the election, successful 61,767 votes, defeating candidates from the main political events, the Nepali Congress and Communist Social gathering of Nepal (UML), who obtained 38,341 and 38,117 votes, respectively.
As mayor, in keeping with his aide and press coordinator, Surendra Bajgain, Shah would arrive at his workplace on the Kathmandu Metropolitan Metropolis (KMC) at about 10am. He would first meet all of the division heads, undergo information, “search readability” on questions he had, after which signal information, Bajgain instructed Al Jazeera.
He would put on his trademark black jacket and pants, and black shades, on daily basis to the workplace. He would take away his glasses contained in the workplace, Bajgain stated. “However you’ll see him in these glasses when taking photos or in public,” he added.
As a mayor, he lived in government-provided lodging within the coronary heart of Kathmandu along with his spouse and an toddler daughter. A health club common, he most well-liked lunch at house, however would sip on limitless cups of tea and occasional within the workplace.
To get away from the general public gaze, Balen “likes to go on lengthy rides outdoors the valley, as a result of right here, folks encompass him fairly often in public,” Bajgain stated.
His ardour for vehicles additionally landed him in controversy, broadly circulated on-line, when he was seen driving an costly Land Rover Defender price 40 million Nepali rupees ($275,0000) in January, whereas campaigning in Jhapa 5, his electoral constituency, for the March 5 election.
Given his robust anticorruption picture, the sight of him in a high-end luxurious automobile drew heightened scrutiny. Critics accused him of a scarcity of transparency over the automobile’s possession and use, whereas some identified that, regardless of selling modesty in public workplace, he not often used public transport because the mayor. The automobile, it turned out, had been given to him by a rich businessman to be used throughout his marketing campaign.
Balen is now additionally pursuing a PhD in conventional infrastructure at Kathmandu College. However he’s removed from a reluctant public determine, neither is he an ivory-tower researcher.
Balen’s songs, which mock political events, criticise corruption and speak of the sacrifices of on a regular basis Nepalis, have been the soundtrack to the efforts by Nepal’s Gen Z to reshape the nation’s politics in current months.
One track, Nepal Haseko (Nepal Smiling), grew to become an anthem throughout final 12 months’s protests, and already has greater than 10 million views on YouTube. Within the track, kids sing within the refrain: “I wish to see Nepal smiling; I wish to see Nepalis residing fortunately.”
One other track, Balidan (Sacrifice) has 14 million views on YouTube. It talks about impunity and corruption. On the Discord server “Youth Towards Corruption”, the place Gen Z protesters picked the nation’s interim chief after Oli’s resignation in September, the identify “Balen” was talked about 16,328 occasions — way over anybody else’s.
However Balen additionally has his critics.
‘Set on hearth’
In 2023, when Balen was mayor, his spouse was in his official automobile when a visitors policeman stopped it. Balen was not within the automobile. The federal government-plated automobile was getting used on a public vacation, which provides visitors personnel the proper to ask the aim of the automobile use and whether or not the driving force has a allow for it.
On social media, Balen blew up concerning the incident: “If any of our KMC autos are stopped by the federal government from tomorrow, I’ll set the Singha Durbar on hearth. Keep in mind, you thief authorities”. Singha Durbar homes many administrative places of work together with the Prime Minister’s Workplace.
The Oli authorities initially wished to cost him for the incendiary assertion, however backed off – Balen’s touch upon social media had drawn assist. It was an indication of issues to return. Throughout the Gen Z rebellion in September, Singha Durbar was severely broken after being set on hearth.
In one other occasion, in 2023, after India put in a mural of “Akhand Bharat” (a Larger India) – encompassing a lot of its neighbours – Shah hung a “Larger Nepal” map in his workplace, together with territories that when belonged to Nepal however now lie inside India’s borders.
The transfer immediately escalated right into a diplomatic hurdle. Shah was accused of going past his mandate as a municipal chief and stoking nationalist sentiment for political good points. His supporters, nonetheless, hailed his transfer as an assertive counter to overseas dominance.
In 2023, Balen additionally banned the screening of Indian movies in Kathmandu, alleging that an Indian film had instructed that Sita, considered one of Hinduism’s most revered goddesses, was born in India. In actual fact, she was born in present-day Nepal in keeping with Hindu scriptures.
As Kathmandu mayor, Balen bulldozed unlawful constructions and ordered garbage to be dumped outdoors authorities places of work. He quickly halted waste assortment from Singha Durbar. The transfer was a riposte to what he argued was the central authorities’s failure to coordinate with town to handle Kathmandu’s persistent waste administration disaster.
But to many belonging to the technology most hungry for change in Nepal, Balen has an attract nobody else seems to have.
‘Shake up the established order’
Aayal Sah, a 20-year-old first-time voter, is a resident of Janakpur – the place Sita, the Hindu Goddess, is believed to have been born. He took three of his buddies to see Balen’s first public look after becoming a member of the RSP. “I can’t straight vote for Balen as he’s not contesting from our space, however I’ll certainly vote for his occasion,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
Rana, the journalist at Kalam Weekly, stated that for a lot of, Balen “embodies the outsider spirit that many younger Nepalis are in search of to shake up the established order”.
But, Rana acknowledged, questions over Balen’s potential to steer Nepal linger because the nation heads to elections. “A major concern for many critics is Balen’s immaturity and his refusal to have interaction with the general public. Throughout his time as mayor, he gave no interviews to native media and didn’t reply any questions,” Rana instructed Al Jazeera.
After Oli stop workplace, when Gen Z protesters voted most for Balen to take over as interim chief on Discord, the then-mayor was not obtainable on the cellphone when the youth motion’s leaders tried to achieve him to see if he would take cost of the nation.
That, say analysts, was one more instance of Balen’s communication type: It’s at all times a method, at his time and place of selecting.
However for a lot of younger Nepalis like Sah, the Janakpur resident, none of those chinks in Balen’s public life matter. “It’s the belief he has gained among the many younger folks,” Sah stated.
“He’s the one one who can take the nation ahead.”
