The Cockroach protests that have swept through India this summer have humiliated Prime Minister Narendra Modi and undermined the indomitable power of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that has ruled India for the past 12 years. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
On 16 May, Abhijeet Dipke, an Indian student at Boston University, posted on X: "What if all cockroaches come together?" It was a tongue-in-cheek response to India's chief justice, who had called unemployed young Indians "cockroaches." Thousands of people responded to Dipke's message. Realising he had tapped into something big, Dipke flew to Delhi on 6 June and went to Jantar Mantar, its famous protest ground.
The protests drew young people from across the country, and the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) – a play on the BJP's name – created a website listing their demands, including reform of India's education system. India has a young population who are better educated than ever before, but it has proven a weak point for the BJP, with the country's universities crumbling and its economy failing to provide jobs for many graduates. Millions of young people spend years prepping for gruelling public exams in the hope of securing a decent job, and their parents go into debt or sell their land to fund these studies.
To make matters worse, these exam papers are routinely leaked and sold to the highest bidder. "Anyone rich enough can buy the answers," Hannah Ellis-Petersen, The Guardian's south Asia correspondent, says. This is devastating for millions of young people, forcing them to retake tests for which they've already studied. After a medical entrance exam was leaked in May, at least 12 students took their own lives; some left notes behind saying they could not bear the thought of resitting the test. The leaks are a potent symbol of institutional corruption, inflaming the anger that young people feel towards a political system that is failing them.
Sonam Wangchuk, an engineer and education reformer from Ladakh, joined the protest on 28 June and declared he would go on indefinite hunger strike until the education minister resigned. "The idea of a hunger strike has a particularly powerful resonance in India," says Hannah. "Gandhi put his life on the line several times with his hunger strikes for independence."
Delhi police forcibly removed Wangchuk from Jantar Mantar on 18 July and took him to hospital, supposedly for the sake of his health. Footage of his hospital stay went viral, and the Cockroach party called for a march on parliament. On Monday, tens of thousands of people started to fill Delhi's streets. "In my whole time covering India, I've never seen so many people turning out," Hannah says. The mood was jubilant, but by the afternoon, things had turned violent as the police began firing teargas and using batons on the protesters.
Despite that, many of the protesters stayed put, and Hannah went back to Jantar Mantar in the following days. "It was the place to be in India," she says. "There were people camping out, delivery guys bringing pizza and biryani."
On Saturday, thousands of people arrived in Delhi to demand the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. When he stepped down in the early afternoon, the protests turned into a triumphant block party. But the Cockroach protests are about much more than a single minister. They have humiliated Modi and undermined the indomitable power of his BJP. They're also a lesson in using humour to political advantage.
Modi likes to present himself as an infallible messiah, but young people have mocked the prime minister online and in the streets, calling him a "56-inch monkey" (a reference to Modi boasting about his ample 56-inch chest), and parodied his social media addresses. "Hating Modi is cool on the internet now, after years of criminalising dissent," one protester told a reporter.
Now the protesters have secured a victory, will their calls for revolution continue? The Cockroach Janta party has tasted victory and might widen the scope of the changes they seek.