Mak Khan
Not long ago, the fate of governments in South Asia was decided in the barracks. Generals whispered in midnight meetings, tanks rumbled into capitals by dawn, and radio stations announced “new orders” with military precision.
From Islamabad to Dhaka, it was a grimly familiar theater: coups carried out under the watchful gaze of Washington or Moscow, each side installing pliant allies in the great Cold War chess game.
That age of overt coups has ended. In its place, a subtler model has emerged—one that does not march, but trends. Regime change is now live-streamed, hashtagged, and algorithmically amplified. Smartphone-wielding protesters, often middle-class youth, become the vanguard.
Their fury is magnified by platforms designed to reward spectacle over substance. Armies, once the protagonists, now linger in the wings, stepping in only when popular momentum has made resistance impossible.
Foreign powers no longer ship weapons to generals; instead, they bankroll NGOs, amplify activists and subsidize influencers who can seed narratives at viral speed.
This is the “social media coup”: cleaner, less obviously authoritarian, and superficially democratic. Yet beneath the surface, it can be even more corrosive than the crude coups of old.
Across South Asia—Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan—governments have fallen or teetered under the weight of digital mobilization. Even India, the region’s elephant, cannot entirely ignore the tremors.
The question now is not whether South Asia is vulnerable to externally nudged upheaval, but whether these digitally engineered revolts leave anything behind but chaos.
Dynasty to meme in Sri Lanka
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