The cockroach revolt

Gen Zzzz to Gen Zinggg

During one very boring economics class in school, back in the late Pleistocene, a cockroach scuttling along the front of the classroom suddenly changed tack. It hurried down the middle of the room straight to my desk, as if it were delivering an urgent note. I was filled with disbelief when it started to climb the far leg of the desk, and then, when its feelers poked over the top, with fear. The repulsive thing crawled directly to me along the edges of the table. It stopped, faced me, and then jumped onto my chest. I shot out of my seat, making a sound like a vuvuzela, flailing in panic and disgust. I’m pretty sure that if I’d had lathis, tear gas, and pellet guns, I would have used them.

Or maybe not, because I’m not a control freak authoritarian, and also pellet guns should not exist. But the BJP government is a control freak authoritarian regime that likes to use lathis, tear gas, and pellet guns, and it suddenly has a massive cockroach problem. The panic is natural. Violence follows.

When the Chief Justice of India called students ‘cockroaches’, he just said the quiet part out loud: people with problems are pests. The pests decided to own the insult. When Abhijeet Dipke created the jokey Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) a few short weeks ago, he couldn’t have known that it would become a lightning rod for an absolute hurricane of anger. A zillion little cockroaches who live online joined up. When Dipke began a protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, nobody thought the little cockroaches would actually show up. Besides, while intimidating and squashing unhappy citizens is old hat in Indian politics, since 2014 peaceful protest has been shrunk, criminalised and socially vetoed to the point where it is, de facto, no longer a fundamental right. It’s just an annoying interruption of the national fantasy of a single-minded, rising, macho Hindu nation led by a non-biological, universally admired strongman. The cockroach protest would be intimidated and squashed. Remember Shaheen Bagh?

But the little cockroaches scuttled straight down the middle of the room and began to climb the desk—they swarmed in support of Sonam Wangchuk’s hunger strike. Whatever disagreements you might have with him, he galvanised these protests. The Indian government’s disbelief turned to fear. It kidnapped Wangchuk, using stealth technology such as plainclothes, and high value target extraction equipment such as not particularly nice bedsheets. The protest only got bigger and more viral. Feelers began to poke over the top of Modi’s desk.

Young people flooded Instagram to say they were coming to Delhi for the Sansad Chalo March on July 20. That historic day, the streets were jam-packed with young people from all the country. They bunked class, didn’t tell their parents, called in sick at work, packed a couple of changes of clothes, flew in, took the train, hitched rides, Ubered it, carpooled, rode the metro, took autos, walked, to be there. They came with printed posters and hand written placards, holding books and roses. It was a rambunctiousness of roaches, a vastness of vermin, a big beautiful bug bonanza. It was, to use the fabulously apt collective noun, an ‘intrusion of cockroaches’. They crawled along the edges of Modi’s table and faced him.

Modi and Shah did what Modi and Shah do—they beat, tear-gassed, and pellet gunned the shit out of them. But cockroaches are notoriously difficult to kill. The protesters regrouped and stayed, louder and angrier than ever, and expanded their demands to include accountability for the violence. They made reels starring ‘police uncle’. The government shut down central Delhi—the internet, the metros, shops, streets. The kids stayed, all day and all night, through rain and heat and miserable humidity. The protest spread to dozens of places in India. Young people from all over South Asia, including Pakistan, made their support known. The police persecuted both protesters and supporters, even blocked food and e-commerce deliveries to the protest site. They conducted digital surveillance.

On July 25, after 36 days of protests, education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, and Abhijeet Dipke posted that he was going to take a nap.

What a monumental, extraordinary moment. You have to have lived here for the last decade to understand how extraordinary. Yes, one ministerial scalp does not systemic change make, and we’ll see how the other demands go. I don’t trust this government as far as I can throw it—it specialises in saying one thing and doing another. Dharmendra Pradhan’s replacement is another, worse RSS drone. Protesters in Assam, Bihar, and Bengal were being hunted and detained, and the CJP is having to threaten renewed agitation to get written guarantees from those governments that they will stop. Police are trying to take down social media content unflattering to the Prime Minister (good luck with that, police uncle). There are good questions to ask about the future of the Cockroach Janata Party movement. Of course everything is more complicated than a feel-good moment. Of course some of the personalities involved are not unimpeachable. Of course nothing is really changed yet.

But now is not the time for that. Now is the time to dance naked in the park reflect and introspect while dancing naked in the park.

Because one thing—the most important thing—has changed. Not only did Gen Z get Modi to bend, but they got a beaten-down citizenry to stand up straighter. They showed the world what courageous self-assertion and solidarity looks like, and what it can achieve. They reminded a country that seems to have forgotten, that public servants work for the people, that they are not rulers but administrators, and that they are accountable to the public. In other words they knocked out fear, and the aura-farming PM became cringe. (Yes, I’m aware that this might be my Fraaands! moment.)

The cockroach movement was born and nourished among a generation whose digital sensibility, language, and content creation skills are leagues ahead of everyone else, including the BJP IT cell. But Gen Z’s reels were for reals. The last piece I wrote said stuffy things about how kids who live online, accustomed to easy ghosting, are going to be bad at conflict resolution. Boy, do I feel stupid. The generation scorned as a bunch of snowflake slackers hit the streets with a clarity, bravery, and endurance that nobody anticipated. And they recorded it all and commented on it all, and maintained their composure and their best camera angles through it all. They are a different species from the uncles in power, and the uncles now know it.

They were also the most unselfconsciously civilised of protesters. The joke’s on Dharmendra Pradhan and the usual suspects in the mainstream media, who called the students the B-team of terrorists, urban naxals, foreign agents, and violent threats. I have never seen such consideration, respect, and mutual care among a throng of strangers, such openness and good faith. While we were all being steamed like momos in the sweltering heat, volunteers and others fanned the crowd with paper and cardboard. They offered food and water to the cops. In a massive press of bodies, often squeezing around each other, the men scrupulously respected female personal space, lifting their hands away, even helping clear a path. The speakers on stage made it a point to remind the crowd that women should feel safe and welcome, and we were.

There were clearly devout Hindus and Muslims, but there were also atheists and rationalists and communists and socialists and every other kind of ist in attendance. There were supporters of every kind of political persuasion. There were straight people and queer people. In other words, it was a perfectly normal collection of Indians. Remember those? Religion did not feature in this solidarity. Patriotism did—there were tricolours and much national anthem singing. Children explained the difference between country and government in idiot-proof terms. What’s a power-hungry bigot to do when his opponents cannot be set at each other’s throats, and cannot be painted as anti-national?

They joined in each other’s chants and passed around food and water. There were people who looked like beauty influencers, and people who looked like labourers. There were grandparents and parents and tiny children, brought along to be a part of history. If you smiled at a group of hard-looking men, they grinned sweetly back and tried to fan you. Teen girls with glitter on their cheeks yelled ‘Jab jab Modi darta hai, police ko aage karta hai!’ Strangers helped each other over the barricades and picked each other up when they fell, and doused tear gas together. They gathered up garbage, and swept the protest site. They weren’t virtue signalling. Basic civility seemed natural to them.

So is irreverent humour. The cockroach revolution made us cry with laughter, and laughter is the single most potent weapon against puffed-up authority. There’s a reason why the Modi government and its foot soldiers have threatened and shut down comedians and gone after satirical social media posts. Fearful reverence is a balloon, and mockery is a pin. Inside the balloon is hot air. The kids used reels and placards and chants that ranged from sweet ribbing to obscenity, from back-handed compliments to outright insult. It’s hard to be a big scary strongman when everyone is laughing at you.

Gen Z disarmed us by having fun—playing racket games across the barricades in Delhi, dancing under the water cannon in Patna, posting GRWM reels for police beatings, flirting with the cops, rating the protest as a dating pool, warning Giorgia Meloni that Modi is a forest of red flags, running from the police and posting their Strava stats, walking around in superhero costumes. Their solidarity and their quick, instinctive humour left the terminally uncool uncles in power floundering, and the public in stitches.

But you couldn’t mistake lightness for lightweight. This most unserious of generations mounted a deadly serious challenge. The BJP works hard? The young protested night and day. Mainstream media is sold out? The cockroaches signed its death warrant. Authoritarianism is a weighty business? Here’s a hilarious revolution, a fist tattooed with jokes. Modi is fearsome and invincible? The kids said ‘Fuck Modi!’ and ‘Chappan inch ka chhota bandar, bhaag Narender, bhaag Narender!’ right into the media’s mikes. The BJP is digitally savvy? Modi’s fatal Instagram post—“Fraaands!”—spun by Godi media as a world record for Insta views, was torn apart by sweet-cheeked teenagers. They swarmed up the face of the most feared government in the history of India, and poked it in the eye while pointing and laughing.

[A note on the swearing: I’m all for it. Swearing is good for the soul, people, and in far better taste than bootlicking. A good string of f-bombs is not just a constitutional right, but often the most well-adjusted response to a situation. I have no patience for people who get their panties in a bunch when they hear curse words, especially if they are unbothered by the moth-eaten remains of Indian democracy. Like humour, swearing is best when punching up, but if you’re going to tell me that the expletives were in ‘bad taste’, I will request you to fuck off—though, if you especially disapprove of women swearing, I will entreat you to especially fuck off. Female decorum is a foundational brick in patriarchy’s stinky edifice. [Side note: I once advised a frustrated elder neighbour to go up on the roof and scream ‘chuuutiyaaaa’, and she said she really enjoyed it.]

The NEET exam leaks issue was the tip of the spear, but the energy and vibe of the protests attracted all sorts of general discontent. Especially after the police brutality on July 20, the rage expanded to include the government’s violence, its autocracy, its incompetence, its bad faith, its goons, and Narendra Modi personally for all his broken promises. The protest’s demands remained focused on accountability for the disaster in education, but everyone who supported the protest also want accountability for joblessness, poverty, and systemic corruption. Patience has finally run out for the disconnect between expectation and reality.

Perhaps it’s because Modi’s government caught Gen X mid-career—at its most self-serving and/or vulnerable, and therefore obedient—that my cohort, and Millennials, either aligned with the government, or kept their heads down, and made lots of noises about ‘balance’ and ‘politicisation’ and ‘selective outrage’. Gen Z seems to have less interest in telling right from left, and less trouble telling right from wrong, and they have naturally assumed their constitutional rights. Modi’s response was to instruct his cabinet to get on Instagram and start making reels—as if this mainstream media-rejecting generation wouldn’t see through more propaganda.

Watching this has been group therapy for many tormented Indians. There is hope that this oppressive, lying, corrupt regime that excels in propaganda and violence may not be unassailable after all. The same regime which, for a dozen years, has demonised and discriminated against various sections of Indians; which has stood around whistling while its supporters lynch and murder; which has engineered violence and communal riots; which has been unable to identify perpetrators of live-streamed crimes because they’re nowhere to be found except on camera; which has terrorised the public—this regime has had its first taste of a mob coming for it. It has been properly humiliated. After all the mind-boggling amounts of money, time, and effort spent on maintaining Modi’s image, it was finally shredded by a bunch of clear-eyed kids. It feels like a break in the clouds.

Those who stamped India into fear, silence, and political apathy, have successfully politicised an entire generation, and lost the rote obedience of others. Gen Z will be the largest voting bloc in 2029. I look forward to reading other people who will intelligently parse the implications and complexities of the Cockroach Janata Party movement and its future—I’m only here to say WHOOP! This time, the cockroaches are revolting, and they’re coming for you. This time, as the protest sign says, you fucked with the wrong generation.