Former Miss Nepal Shrinkhala Khatiwada is among the many ‘nepo babies’ of Nepal currently under fire as the Himalayan country faces its worst unrest in decades.
The 2018 beauty queen has been steadily losing social media followers as she faces backlash for her silence amid the protests.
Some background on the Gen Z protests in Nepal
The ‘Gen Z’ protests in Nepal were triggered by a social media ban that brought thousands of youngsters to the streets and led to the resignation of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.
Tens of thousands of protesters stormed and set fire to government buildings and attacked politicians on Tuesday. As criticism of the country’s political elite widened, the prime minister resigned, though it appeared to have little effect on the unrest that turned violent.
The ‘nepo baby’ connection
While the social media ban was the immediate trigger for the protests that began on Monday, discontent against the government and Nepal’s powerful politicians had been brewing on social media before that.
For a few days before the social media ban – which was lifted on Tuesday – youngsters in Nepal had been sharing videos criticising the ‘nepo babies’ of the country – children of rich and powerful families. Much of the outrage centred around discontent regarding their lavish lifestyle funded by taxpayer money.
Who is Shrinkhala Khatiwada?
Shrinkhala Khatiwada, 29, is one such ‘nepo kid’ who came under fire on social media. Shrinkhala is the daughter of a former Nepal health minister Birodh Khatiwada. Her mother, Munu Sigdel Khatiwada, is a member of the state parliament of Bagmati Province.
Shrinkhala won the title of Miss Nepal World in 2018. She went on to compete in the Miss World pageant that year with 118 other contestants, reaching the top 12 in the beauty pageant.
Shrinkhala Khatiwada loses Instagram followers
The Nepalese model maintains an active presence on Instagram, where her carefully curated feed shows her travelling to places like London, United States, Switzerland etc. She had over a million followers before the protests began.
For the last few days, however, her Instagram follower count has been dropping steadily. Where she once had over a million followers, Shrinkhala now has only 909,000 followers on Instagram.
According to SocialBlade, she had over a million followers on August 28. She began losing followers on September 5 and saw the biggest drop yesterday (September 9), when over 97,000 people unfollowed her on Instagram.
Backlash against the beauty queen
Social media users have called out the beauty queen for not speaking in support of the protestors.
“Genuinely felt like the backlash Shrinkhala was facing was a tad bit too much initially but maintaining silence even after 20+ of your fellow youths have been murdered is f***** deplorable and nasty,” read one comment on X.
“Never understood the hype of Shrinkhala. Publicly claiming to remove the corrupted bureaucracy to marrying into the most corrupted family, protesting for her in laws and still advocating for a better Nepal. What a hypocrite,” another wrote.