Walking from Jantar Mantar to Connaught Place in central New Delhi on Saturday evening provided an unusual sight for the prime corridor of power in the world’s largest democracy.
Satirical posters mocking India’s legislative, executive and judiciary were plastered on the walls, and the pavement was sprayed with sometimes “vulgar” graffiti mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
These were all remnants of thousands of young Cockroach movement protesters who had flooded the streets hours earlier after India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.
Celebrating Pradhan’s resignation, which had been a core protest demand, some protesters were heard telling security officials “see you at the next protest,” coming only days after several people were injured in clashes with baton-wielding police who fired tear gas into crowds.
Instagram was also full of images from cities across India with young people dancing in front of police officials to the line “Everybody knows that I’m a good girl, officer ” from Lana Del Ray’s song “Playing Dangerous.”
Others held posters reading: “Cuff me, daddy” and some were seen climbing atop police barricades.
India’s Gen Z rattles government into change
The movement, known as the Cockroach Janta Party movement (CJP), came after the chief justice of India referred to unemployed young people as “cockroaches” in an offhand remark. The name is also a play on Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Since a scandal broke in May involving a highly competitive university entrance exam, the Gen Z protests have spread across India, challenging the political establishment with Instagram reels, viral trends, sarcastic jingles and posters.
“In our generation humor has become the defense mechanism from pain, frustration and helplessness. This entire protest is driven by humor, driven by Instagram and social media,” Karan Azad, a 24-year-old law student, told DW at the Jantar Mantar protest site in New Delhi.
Another protester held a sign addressed to Modi reading in transliterated Hindi: “Buddy, you can’t even make tea,” alluding to Modi’s boyhood days as a tea seller.
“I had to do my part. I am the youth. If we don’t stand up for ourselves no one else will, we have to fight this battle ourselves,” the female protester with the sign told DW without giving her name.
A protester named Tushar, also 24, said he wasn’t “afraid of a backlash” from the authorities, but rather “would have had FOMO [fear of missing out]” had he not joined the protest.
Ridhima, a 17-year-old school student, said: “If not us then who? Those who are not here, it just speaks to their cowardice and I am talking about people who are sitting on their chairs in positions of power.”
What drove the Cockroach movement?
Content creator Arun Singh, known by his social media handle “TheJhumroo,” said that meme culture kept the satire and humor fresh throughout the protests.
“It’s the meme culture which fueled this kind of emotion. As millennials, we developed the language of memes as we adapted to the internet culture, but this younger generation was born with memes being their language. This is how they communicate,” he told DW.
Singh said that the young protesters are best described as “fearless.”
“They don’t fear anyone, they don’t worry about how they would be perceived and that’s what happens when you’re absolutely young. That is what is driving their grit,” he said.
Mumbai-based comedian Aditi Mittal observes that the fearlessness of the Gen Z protesters comes from them living in a “hyper visible world”.
“All of them have 500 followers at a minimum. If something goes up on their stories, it’s not going to go vastly ignored,” she told DW.
Mittal also thinks that India’s Gen Z inherited the “perfect protest.”
“The generation prior to ours wanted better infrastructure. We millennials aspired to have a more equal world, ours was a time distinct with, for example, the mistreatment of Muslims. We grew up in that and were constantly gaslit into… ‘it’s not that bad, it’s not happening.’ We were also overly forbearing,” she told DW. “Gen Z inherited the perfect protest. Education goes beyond religion and secularism. It can resonate, especially for a country like ours where education has been the tool of escape from social class or a financial situation.”
Mittal also points out differences between today and the 2019 citizenship law (CAA) protests, one of the last big protests that had challenged the Modi government, and was centered on discrimination against Muslims.
“The anti-CAA protests constantly demanded the perfection of the protesters. Be nice to them [authorities] even as they beat you or hold a gun to you, that was the language spoken to us. But these younger kids don’t stand around and wait. They are not tripping over themselves to be perfect,” she said.
Getting attention with political humor
Satire is not new to India’s politics. For example, caricatures were used as a means to channel anti-colonial anger in Bengal. Political cartoonists like Abu Abraham and R K Laxman challenged censorship brought on by former Prime Minister and Congress leader Indira Gandhi’s imposition of a state of emergency that suspended civil liberties between 1975 and 1977.
“Satire is a great way of putting your word across. It’s like eating a healthy food, but cooked in an interesting way, which is munchable. Humor has better penetration when it comes to content. It gets more eyeballs,” content creator Singh told DW.
Academic and writer Ananya Vajpeyi said that this sense of humor built sympathy with the students and kept the mood light and non-threatening.
“These were young boys and girls who looked tiny, not strong, not threatening, not even articulate sometimes, who had drawn or written something funny on a piece of paper. The violent crackdown backfired immediately because these were not two equal forces facing each other,” she told DW.
India’s Gen-Z rattles ‘brand Modi’
Modi is seen as an image-conscious politician and his 12 years in India’s seat of power have been defined by a carefully crafted image that relies heavily on perception management and public relations.
Many of the protesters directly mocked Modi, challenging his brand.
“The whole atmosphere has been so stifled since the anti-CAA protest was shut down. People have been punished for expressing any kind of criticism or dissent. And here you have thousands of students from every corner of the country, just like cockroaches crawling out of the woodwork and making life hell for the Modi establishment,” Vajpeyi told DW.
Vajpeyi says the ire against Modi has likely caused “embarrassment” for the prime minister.
“What these kids are saying is like a punch in the stomach for Modi, if he is able to see all this. It’s possible that he’s being kept from it by those around him, but the opposition sees it,” she said. “The rest of the country who is on social media sees it.”
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Edited by: Wesley Rahn
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