Source : VVP SharmaBy VVP Sharma
Student-led protest movements have always carried the raw energy of rebellion, the moral clarity of youth, and a stubborn belief that the world can be otherwise. Yet history continues to play a cruel trick on us. From the campus occupations of 1968 in Europe and the United States to the Arab Spring a decade ago, and now the rumblings in Nepal, students ignite the fire—but when the smoke clears, it is often the old elites who warm their hands. Why does this cycle repeat?
Pierre Bourdieu once remarked that “every established order tends to produce the naturalisation of its own arbitrariness.” Students, not yet entangled in patronage networks, are among the few with the audacity to challenge this arbitrariness. They rise against corruption, repression, and the suffocating weight of authoritarianism. However, power has its own arsenal: deeper coffers, stronger institutions, a monopoly on violence, and the ability to shape the narrative. The result is familiar. Movements that begin with radical clarity are often tamed into modest reforms, slogans co-opted by the very system they sought to overthrow.
Consider 1968. In Paris, Berlin, Prague, and Berkeley, students rejected militarism, hierarchy, and the cold rationality of technocratic capitalism. Philosopher Herbert Marcuse hailed them as a new revolutionary subject, uncorrupted by the conformity of consumerism. But when the dust settled, Charles de Gaulle’s regime in France endured, and in the United States, the spirit of collective resistance was repackaged into the language of market “freedom.” Chantal Mouffe’s warning rings true: elites depoliticise radical demands by reducing them to technical negotiations, draining them of emancipatory force.
The Arab Spring offers an even sharper lesson. Again, the youth crowded the streets of Tunis, Cairo, and Benghazi, demanding dignity (karama), freedom (hurriya), and justice (adala). For a brief moment, it seemed as if a new Arab world might be born. Yet in Egypt, the fall of Hosni Mubarak gave way not to democracy but to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s iron hand. Antonio Gramsci helps explain this: ruling classes survive by practicing “passive revolution,” adopting just enough of the people’s rhetoric to appear responsive, while reasserting control under a new guise.
Now Nepal stands at a crossroads. Students are once again in the streets, railing against corruption, unemployment, and broken promises of the politicians and the 2015 Constitution. Their country has seen this before: the People’s Movement of 1990, the anti-monarchy uprising of 2006. Each time, the youth shook the foundations of power. Yet, each time, political elites—some of whom were former radicals themselves—managed to capture the narrative. Today, they style themselves as “entrepreneurs of rights,” translating revolutionary fervor into patronage deals, electoral bargains, and half-baked reforms.
The pattern is sobering. Students excel at disruption, but disruption is not the same as durable change. Elites hold the cards of capital, media, international legitimacy, and state machinery. Without organization, the fire of protest risks burning out—or worse, being bottled and sold back as a symbol of reform. So, what can be done?
First, spontaneity must be paired with structure. Hannah Arendt reminded us that freedom is not simply the absence of oppression but the capacity to begin anew. Students must build enduring institutions—such as grassroots networks, cooperatives, and digital commons—that cannot be easily hijacked.
Second, alliances matter. The May 1968 protests in France only became serious when students joined forces with workers. In Tunisia, labour unions gave the uprising staying power. The same lesson applies today: only by connecting with farmers, workers, and marginalized groups can students prevent elites from narrowing the agenda.
Third, embrace pluralism. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe argued that lasting change requires weaving diverse grievances into a common front—a “chain of equivalence”. A student movement isolated on campus is vulnerable; a student movement speaking the language of many struggles is harder to co-opt.
Finally, think beyond borders. Protest has always been contagious: Paris inspired Prague, Tunis inspired Cairo. Today, digital tools make transnational solidarity possible on an unprecedented scale. Authoritarian regimes are learning from one another; students must do the same.
Ultimately, co-optation is not a foregone conclusion. Paulo Freire wrote in Pedagogy of the Oppressed: “Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift.” Students may not yet control institutions, but they control something harder to capture—the imagination of what could be.