The last few years have been hard on many of us, grappling with the daily humdrum of watching a country fraying at the seams, a world on fire lit by wars, cruel authoritarian regimes and injustices, and watching this monotonous rhythm with sheer helplessness and hopelessness. Somewhere at some point, numbed by this accumulated baggage, I stopped smelling the fire. I’m suddenly overwhelmed with a mix of emotions I cannot fully fathom or measure. Pain, Anger, Rage, Admiration, Pride, Curiosity, Despair, Hope, Fear, Gratitude and perhaps much more: a potpourri of emotions now bubble in my calloused heart.
For many fellow Indians, a unique history being scripted in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar – as the youth take centre-stage and stand their ground – has kindled a spark. For those it hasn’t, they can’t be human enough.
When a generation that many may have written off as mechanical, even if aspirational, indifferent, self-obsessed, fed on hate and even insensitive, rises like a tsunami – for a just cause, resolute with conviction, and united with courage – salutations are in order. The youth are in the lead with no leaders, no power tussle and no known ambitions for pecuniary benefits. As a citizen, I can’t recall a moment when I have felt prouder of this country, especially its youth.
The Triggers, Leaks and Cockroach
For almost a month, the youths have captured the streets. The trigger was waiting to happen. The unrest grew from two currents merging into one. The spark was a courtroom remark by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, who compared unemployed young people and social-media activists to cockroaches. Columbia University student Abhijeet Dipke turned the insult into satire, founding the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) as a mocking play on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's name. What started as a joke gained an enormous online following within days, growing to 22.7 million on Instagram.
That satire fused with genuine anger at India's exam system with a quick succession of examination paper leaks. The NEET medical entrance test, which roughly two million students compete for about 130,000 seats, was cancelled and ordered to be re-held after a paper leak, followed by allegations of irregularities in CBSE's on-screen marking of school board exams. In the backdrop is the present government’s staggering record of 150-plus paper leaks in the last twelve years.
Underlying these scams is a deeper economic anxiety, as graduate unemployment hovers above 15%, eroding the long-held belief that education can secure upward mobility for an aspirational youth.
From Cyber Sky to Streets
The movement moved from the internet to the street on June 6 when the CJP held its first demonstration at Delhi's Jantar Mantar alongside established student unions, demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and was joined by student organisations like the Students Federation of India, All India Students Association and All India Students Federation.
It became a national story after Ladakhi engineer-activist Sonam Wangchuk joined it and began an indefinite hunger strike on June 28, with crowds gradually beginning to swell. The cause was also expanded from a minister’s resignation to grievances against unemployment, corruption and with a demand for cleansing the education system with reforms.
Tensions escalated sharply after police forcibly hospitalised Wangchuk, and subsequently on July 20 when thousands of protestors took out their scheduled march to Parliament. Security forces used tear gas, batons and pellet guns to suppress the largely peaceful protest, while mobile internet access was also restricted in the area. Unfazed, the youth – comprising university and school students, and young professionals – and joined by several sympathisers are adamant to carry the movement to its logical conclusion.
Beyond the Mass Presence
What is impressive is not just the sheer bulk of numbers present on the ground at Jantar Mantar. What is breathtaking is how this movement is unfolding – passion, conviction and determination stimulating it, peaceful in the face of state brutality, and political in its lack of petty politicking. It is difficult to put in words what it means when the young – some teenagers – return to the site of protest with a sense of unflinching courage and commitment with their bruises and broken bones suffered during police excesses, when they refuse to either budge or bow to power, when their numbers begin to multiply rather than being disheartened.
While anger and steely determination fuels it, what nurtures and humanises it is the unprecedented camaraderie and wisdom that is on open display. Messages of reminding each other to continue peacefully are occasionally passed around. So are food and other essentials. The solidarity exists outside the campus the youth have created for themselves, reaching from various parts of the city, country and even abroad – in the form of Swiggy deliveries, drinking water, medicines, sanitary pads, footwear and other basic essentials.
While others sit and rest, some youth stand as volunteers fanning them in this sweltering heat of July with their posters and banners, which are a mosaic of brilliance on their own. Memes and posters articulate their anger and demands with satire, wit and creativity: ‘Twenty students dead, what about accountability’. ‘Missing’ (with a photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’, ‘Tu Jhootha Main Makkar’ (with a photograph of Modi and Dharmendra Pradhan), ‘Melody Khao, Desh Nahi’, ‘Abki Baar, Antim Sanskar’, ‘You F***ed with the wrong generation’, and ‘My pad is more leak proof than NTA’.
The moment has inspired cockroaches across the country and they are coming out in similar and innovative ways seeking accountability from the present regime.
The youth have created for themselves a space that is united in the true sense of the word. Religion and caste here do not matter. Neither do political ideologies. They stand together and resolute in pursuit of one shared goal and dream of cleansing the country, securing its future and their own.
When Brute Power Cracks Down
The steam and momentum this movement is gathering – for all the right reasons – would naturally be resisted by those who simply want to rule arrogantly with brute power. And, that’s how they are responding – on unexpected lines – with not just hordes of police men and CRPF, RAF battalions armed in full riot gear with batons and guns but also with a chaotic bunch of hooligans masquerading as cops and protected by the real cops.
They engage in stone pelting, brutal beatings, teargassing, showering pellet bullets, hitting the youth with shock batons, nailed batons and sexual abuse. Such barbarity as was on display on July 20, and continues thereafter in the form of more barricades, detentions, stringent internet shutdown, and forcing universities to threaten students against joining the protests. has expanded the issue from cleansing the rot and accountability for exam leaks to police accountability, from Pradhan’s resignation to the resignation of Amit Shah and Modi.
The Illusions They Weave
A rattled Modi has belatedly responded, assuring a speedy probe and a fast-track court to punish the guilty. That’s nothing but Barbie doll candy and fluff: announcements of official probes hardly ever see the light of day and fast-track courts rarely deliver. The sluggish progress on 152 cases of exam leaks in the last twelve years, resulting in just one conviction are proof. Skepticism heightens when the Supreme Court is unmoved by the police brutality and refuses to admit a petition, reasoning “it is a waste of time”.
During Modi’s recent visit to New Zealand, when journalists asked why Modi does not hold press conferences, a senior external affairs ministry official answered that he’s a leader who prefers direct engagement with voters rather than communicating through intermediaries. As New Delhi’s protest comes into global limelight, the world is watching that mode of communication that comes with a belated and meaningless assurance and the barrel of the gun, accompanied by vilification campaigns, ‘anti-national’ slurs and invention of a ‘foreign-hand’ conspiracy.
The Cockroaches Push Back
The cockroaches are not buying into the Prime Minister’s illusory tactics. They are up and about, multiplying like real cockroaches, spreading only the germs of love, care, justice and democratic thinking. They’ve lost their fear and are not going to go back into hiding. This movement that has inspired not just the youth but also the older generations is not going to go away, and it shouldn’t. As AISA student leader, Neha Bora sprang back spiritedly two days after she broke her three-week-long fast to remind the gathering in her fiery speech: Hum Yaad Rakhenge……
The youth have spoken and already given the world a masterclass in activism with its unprecedented spirit and energy, with a movement that came into existence organically and is growing strong, no matter what the conspiracy theorists would believe. Yet, it is vulnerable – susceptible to political hijack, brutality, and criminalisation.
Not an Easy Path Ahead
We’ve seen the consequences earlier during CAA. We’ve witnessed in Kashmir, where peaceful youth protesting over human rights violations and custodial killings in 2010 were brutalised and pushed to pick up the stone. Each body count increased the volatility of the stone-pelting youngsters. An image popularized by those who want to see Kashmir in a particular frame became the stereotype. Everyone remembers the stone-pelter. Nobody bothers to know the genesis.
As pellet guns, known to have been used mostly in Kashmir before this, begin to be used on the country’s young, Kashmir’s story serves a guiding lesson. Kashmir is a piece of geography that is treated differently from rest of the country, despite the narrative of integration, making the model of heightened excesses deployed there look glamorous. But, make no mistakes, the present regime – high on hate, power and arrogance – is capable of perpetrating similar atrocities in Delhi and elsewhere, even much more. Every attempt will be made to break, defame and erase the present moment.
A Spark Lit Will go a Long Way
Whether the cockroach movement sustains such pressures or not, it has lit a spark the country needs, and this cannot be fully extinguished. Its biggest contribution is that it has united a nation and humanised it.
Will the youth be able to carry the movement to its logical conclusion? As a citizen proud of this generation and grateful to them, I certainly hope so. As a student of history and politics, I fear this may be a very difficult road. My maternal instincts carry the pain of their wounds and prayers for their safety. But that’s not enough.
When the cockroaches are out and fighting, the onus is on us - the ‘parjeevis’, ‘andolan jeevis’, parasites, the activists, dissenters, members of the civil society, and political parties on whom Modi has been casting these slurs – to stand with them in solidarity and give them outside support.
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