标签： Asia

In the bustling streets of New Delhi, thousands of young Indian demonstrators have launched a dual-front movement that is redefining modern political protest: while mass gatherings put direct pressure on authorities off-line, a creative, humor-fueled digital campaign is winning the battle for online narrative, turning the same social media infrastructure that built Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political brand against his administration. What began as a single-issue outcry over education system corruption has rapidly evolved into a broad youth movement that challenges long-standing taboos around criticizing the image-conscious prime minister, using satire and viral content to sidestep traditional government censorship and crackdowns.

Rooted in anger over a series of high-profile exam leaks—including the illegal distribution of answers for India’s national medical college entrance exam that has jeopardized the career prospects of millions of aspiring students—the protests first erupted one month ago. Demonstrators initially called for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, but public frustration quickly expanded to demand broader government accountability, spreading to major cities across the country.

The driving force behind the movement’s digital and cultural expansion is the Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical grassroots collective that coined the movement’s identity two months ago. The group has turned humor and meme culture into a powerful tool of resistance, giving Generation Z and young millennial Indians a language that matches their digital-native habits to express widespread discontent. “We find long, formal speeches boring. We’re the summary generation—we consume content in quick, bite-sized chunks, so we use that same format to spread our message,” a 23-year-old student protester explained to The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity over fears of government retaliation.

This satirical approach has shaped every part of the movement, from online content to on-the-ground demonstrations. Even violent clashes with police have been reframed as viral, shareable content: protesters joke about maintaining their fitness streaks on the tracking app Strava while fleeing baton charges, and edit footage of dodging police barricades to mimic gameplay of the popular endless runner mobile game Subway Surfers. Young female activists have adapted influencer culture for protest, posting “get ready with me” tutorials before marches and “fit check” posts highlighting homemade safety gear like helmets and goggles. Pro-government television anchors, who have repeatedly framed demonstrators as “anti-national” actors backed by foreign conspiracies, have become common targets of parody videos mocking their over-dramatic broadcast styles.

At the main New Delhi protest site, the influence of digital meme culture is impossible to miss. Demonstrators wear pop culture costumes like Spider-Man and Batman, carrying placards laced with irreverent jokes and references. One sign featuring Education Minister Pradhan quips, “When will AI take his job?” Another sums up the movement’s core ethos: “Every joke is a (tiny) revolution.” While some slogans lean into profane, edgy language that would be unheard of in traditional Indian political protest, activists say it is simply the natural language of their generation.

For Modi, who has held national office for nearly 13 years and built his political dominance around a carefully curated public image of strength and decisiveness, this humorous grassroots challenge poses an unprecedented dilemma. With nearly half of India’s population under the age of 25, young voters make up one of the country’s largest and most influential electoral blocs. A heavy-handed crackdown on the movement risks alienating this critical demographic, but allowing the mockery to continue unchallenged erodes the carefully cultivated authority Modi has built over his decade in power.

Most notably, the movement has broken a long-standing unwritten taboo: direct public mockery of the prime minister himself. For years, criticism of Modi was often muted during public protests due to widespread fears of government retaliation against dissent. Today, however, Modi’s own gestures, speech patterns and mannerisms are regularly edited into viral political jokes that circulate widely across social platforms.

When Modi released a late-night, selfie-style video addressing the protesters last week, promising swift legal action against those responsible for exam leaks, social media users quickly responded with a wave of parody edits. The clips added satirical voice-overs calling out unfulfilled campaign promises from Modi’s past terms. One of the most viral edits cut directly from Modi opening his address by calling protesters “friends” to a clip of three young women staring directly into the camera and responding, “No, we are not.”

For the protesters, this tactic is not just about comedy—it is about fighting the government on its own turf. “There is no better way to challenge Modi than using the same social media that helped him build his political brand,” a 21-year-old student said. “We’re just answering him in his own language.”

Beyond the political punchline, young activists say the humor serves a deeper purpose: it is a coping mechanism for a generation that has far less patience for unaddressed injustice than older cohorts. “If our phone data runs out mid-day, we can’t even stand that inconvenience. So of course we’re not going to tolerate this systemic corruption that’s ruining our futures,” a 25-year-old protester explained, noting that the meme-driven movement reflects a core generational shift. Unlike previous generations that were socialized to endure hardship quietly, she said, young Indians today refuse to “simply put up with” a system that they say has failed them. The satirical digital campaign has expanded the movement far beyond its street protest roots, growing its reach and ramping up pressure on an administration that has been careful not to be seen caving to the fast-growing youth movement, even as it struggles to counter the protesters’ narrative.

In a bustling New Delhi public square, 18-year-old Arya Singh sits cross-legged on the pavement, strumming a tambourine as thousands of mostly student protesters crowd around her, chanting in unified roar: “Throw out the incompetent government” and “Long live people’s revolution.” For nearly four weeks, this growing demonstration has centered at Jantar Mantar, a historic 18th-century astronomical observatory that serves as India’s capital’s official designated space for public protest, drawing students from every corner of the country.

The core demand of the movement is unambiguous: the immediate resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and India’s federal education minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet. The trigger for the protest was the high-profile leak of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), one of the world’s largest high-stakes entrance examinations that determines admission to 137,000 undergraduate medical seats across the country.

More than 2.3 million aspirants sat for the OMR-based NEET exam on May 3. But weeks later, an intelligence investigation uncovered that the question paper had been widely shared via the messaging app Telegram across the state of Rajasthan, forcing national exam authorities to cancel the original test and order a full re-examination on June 21. In the chaotic gap between cancellation and the retest, at least 12 students died by suicide, driven by crippling stress, shattered career hopes, and crippling uncertainty, an Indian Express investigation confirmed. Additional self-inflicted deaths have been recorded in the weeks since.

“These 20 young people gave up every part of their lives—sports, trips, time with family—to prepare for this exam. This is not suicide. This is murder,” Singh told Middle East Eye in an on-site interview. “If this same scandal had happened anywhere else, the minister would have taken responsibility and stepped down immediately. But here in India, he clings to his post without a shred of accountability.”

The movement, which has drawn widespread Gen Z support, carries the deliberate satirical name the “Cockroach Janta Party (CJP).” The label originated after India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant sparked national outrage during an open court hearing, when he compared unemployed young activists and job-seeking youth to “parasites” and “pests” attacking India’s political system. “There are youngsters like cockroaches who don’t get any employment or have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some become social media, RTI activists and other activists, and they start attacking everyone,” Kant said in his original remarks. The judge later walked back the comment, clarifying he had targeted only individuals holding fraudulent degrees, not India’s youth, whom he described as “the pillars of a developed India.” But the damage was done, and young activists reclaimed the insult as a badge of honor.

“They call us cockroaches, and maybe we are, because the system is decayed. What else can they expect such a rotten system to produce? The more rotten the system becomes, the more cockroaches it will produce,” Singh said. “That is why we are here: to show what happens when a government refuses to take accountability for its failures.”

The movement gained national momentum after prominent Ladakh-based engineer, education reformer, and climate activist Sonam Wangchuk joined the protests in solidarity, launching a 26-day hunger strike that concluded on July 24. In the final hours of his strike, Delhi Police forcibly removed the 50-year-old activist from the protest site and admitted him to a local hospital. Wangchuk agreed to end his fast only after authorities gave formal assurances that police would end the use of force against demonstrators, drop all pending charges against protesters, and open formal negotiations with government representatives.

Abhigyan, a 26-year-old New Delhi resident and one of the protest’s lead organizers, says the movement is rooted in broader anger over systemic corruption, institutional injustice, and rising religious intolerance under 12 years of BJP rule. He accuses the ruling party of using brutal, authoritarian tactics to suppress the demonstration. “This is not the response expected from a democratic nation but from a fascist regime, and that is what we are witnessing,” he said. Abhigyan alleges that on July 20, when protesters attempted to march toward India’s Parliament building, Delhi Police used iron-studded batons to beat demonstrators, erected electrified iron barricades to shock crowd members, and fired pellet guns to disperse the gathering. Delhi Police has denied all these allegations in an official post on X, calling the claims “completely false and misleading.” Abhigyan counters that three protesters have confirmed pellet gun injuries, 65 demonstrators were admitted to Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, and 15 of those were in critical condition. He holds Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah directly responsible for the escalation of violence, noting “protesters never had the resources to escalate this crisis—this is entirely on the government.”

Across the protest site, young aspirants like 21-year-old aspiring doctor Vijay Ratawal say the government’s use of force has pushed even undecided young people firmly into opposition. Reciting a collective protest poem that translates to “Leaked papers have now crossed eighty. What kind of government is this?”, Ratawal points to independent research that records nearly 70 major exam paper leaks across India during Modi’s 12-year tenure. “The use of force is making us reconsider whether the BJP should remain in power. There were doubts earlier, but now everything is clear: there are those who work for ordinary people, and those who only want to cling to power,” Ratawal said. “BJP is turning the majority of the Indian population, the youth, against them. The entire BJP cabinet is incompetent; they have set the country on fire on every front, from the Gujarat farmer protests to the Manipur ethnic violence to the tribal funeral pyre protests in Madhya Pradesh.” He added that families of protesters have lost all trust in the system, not only over exam leaks but across a slate of policies that harm ordinary citizens, and called for the BJP government to step aside to make way for competent, accountable leadership.

The protest has drawn cross-generational support, including from 72-year-old farmer Jankabi Krishnakumar Nirmohi, who traveled from Bihar’s Bhojpur district to join the demonstration. “In 1974, we had the Navnirman and JP movements against inflation, food scarcity, and corruption, demanding systemic change. Those protests were far larger than this one, but the cruelty the BJP has unleashed on students today has no parallel in Indian history,” Nirmohi said. “When parliament loses its way, the streets begin to speak, and that is when decisions are made. It is shameless that Modi publicly praised the education minister on his birthday while students were protesting against him, and he never even mourned the 20 young people who died. That makes it very clear where his loyalties lie.”

In recent years, South Asia has seen a wave of mass Gen Z-led protests that have toppled sitting governments in Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Prominent Indian political scientist and Centre for the Study of Developing Societies professor Sanjay Kumar says the current protest sends a clear signal of widespread youth discontent with the BJP government. Opposition parties have visited the protest site to express solidarity, but Kumar says the movement was not initiated or organized by opposition groups. “My assessment is that it was neither started nor organised by opposition parties. However, once the movement began, the opposition saw it as an opportunity and tried to take advantage of it by sending a message to the youth that they are the ones looking after their interests,” he explained. He also cautions against drawing direct parallels to the regime-change movements in other South Asian countries, noting that “those are smaller countries, and something happening in the capital here has very different implications for the country. If you speak to people in rural areas, which make up nearly 70 percent of the population, I do not think this movement will have much resonance. The momentum is issue-specific and limited to a particular section of the population, mainly the youth of the country.”

Former University of Kashmir political science professor Noor Ahmad Baba argues that the BJP’s refusal to demand Pradhan’s resignation stems from a desire to avoid appearing weak in the face of public pressure. For his part, Pradhan has struck back at critics, accusing the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, of exploiting students as political pawns to disrupt the parliament’s Monsoon Session. “Even after the government conveyed its readiness for a comprehensive discussion, the Congress chose political spectacle over democratic debate. Their objective was never solutions for students; it was disruption for political headlines,” Pradhan wrote in an official X post. “The students of India deserve far better than being treated as tools in a political campaign. They deserve certainty over chaos, solutions over slogans and responsibility over disruption. We owe our students more than outrage. We owe them answers, reforms and accountability. That is exactly what our government remains committed to delivering.”

Baba notes that the BJP has never faced a youth-led protest of this scale, and it remains committed to avoiding any sign of weakness by forcing Pradhan’s exit. “It will be interesting to see how the BJP handles this situation,” he said. “Having no precedent in the past does not necessarily ensure that a new precedent can’t be created.”

On July 20, a crackdown on student-led demonstrators and journalists gathered at New Delhi’s iconic Jantar Mantar protest site has ignited national controversy, after evidence emerged that Indian security forces used controversial pump-action pellet guns—weapons that fire hundreds of jagged metal fragments—against the crowd, according to hospital and official records. The demonstration was part of a months-long movement demanding sweeping educational reforms and the ousting of India’s sitting education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, rooted in growing public anger over systemic failures in the country’s national examination system.

In the aftermath of the crackdown, multiple prominent human rights organizations have called for independent inquiries into allegations of excessive force. Human Rights Watch documented that Delhi Police and the Central Rapid Action Force (RAF) deployed a range of aggressive crowd control tactics beyond pellet guns, including electric shock batons, tear gas, and stone attacks, while also imposing an internet blackout to cut off communication between protesters and the outside world. Local media reports confirm that medical records from Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital confirm pellet entry wounds on the body of one journalist admitted after the crackdown, who was examined by three separate hospital departments.

Initial official responses offered conflicting accounts. Delhi Police immediately dismissed claims of pellet gun use as “completely false and misleading” in a statement posted to X on July 21. But just four days later, an internal RAF investigation confirmed that excessive force had been used against the crowd. This incident marks the first documented use of pellet guns by Indian security forces to suppress dissent within the capital New Delhi, though the weapon has been a staple of counter-protest tactics in Indian-controlled Kashmir for decades. In 2018, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights labeled pellet guns “one of the most dangerous weapons used against protesters” by Indian security forces in the region.

The current wave of Delhi protests traces its origins back to June, when the online satirical movement Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) launched demonstrations after Indian Chief Justice Surya Kant publicly labeled unemployed Indian youth “cockroaches” and “parasites.” The movement quickly gained momentum around demands for Pradhan’s resignation and accountability for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), a critical medical entrance examination marred by repeated paper leaks, systemic corruption, and widespread inequity. The crisis has been linked to more than 20 suicides by aspirational students who lost opportunities due to the scandal. The protests grew into a mass movement after prominent Indian activist Sonam Wangchuk joined a 26-day hunger strike at Jantar Mantar, culminating in a large-scale march on India’s Parliament the week before the July 20 crackdown.

Amid escalating public pressure, Pradhan announced his resignation on July 27—minutes after Delhi Police again attacked student protesters with batons and tear gas. But CJP organizers quickly confirmed that demonstrations would continue until all their remaining demands are met, including compensation for the families of students who died by suicide connected to the NEET scandal, and formal accountability for the July 20 police crackdown. In recent weeks, the protest movement has expanded far beyond its original demands for educational reform, with many participants now calling for broader government accountability and even the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

State police forces across India have already responded with a widespread crackdown on participants. In Uttar Pradesh, police raided the home of Muslim CJP volunteer Mohd Junaid, detained his family members, and seized his official identity cards ahead of formal charges. Beyond state security forces, openly Hindu nationalist groups have also issued repeated public threats to disrupt protests and attack participants.

The use of pellet guns in Delhi marks an unprecedented escalation, even as human rights groups have documented repeated human rights violations by Delhi Police during large-scale protests in recent years—most notably the 2019 Muslim-led student demonstrations against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. “This is the first recorded incident in the capital of what is known as the world’s largest democracy,” Tanvi Mishra, a cultural worker and active protest participant, told Middle East Eye. Mishra added that the normalization of repressive tactics in Kashmir has allowed the state to expand those same tactics to the capital. “Many would not have imagined an internet shutdown in the centre of the capital of India until now, but why is it that we are conditioned into accepting it as a state of normalcy in Kashmir?” she said, noting that the same repressive tactics honed in Kashmir are now being used to target Muslim communities across India.

A Kashmiri writer and researcher, speaking to Middle East Eye under the pseudonym Eph for safety reasons, described Kashmir as a “testing lab” for tools of state suppression. “Once everything was tested and they experimented with ‘efficient’ ways to suppress a protest, they began exporting the tactics to other places,” she explained.

Following the internal investigation into the Delhi crackdown, the RAF announced last Saturday that it would no longer deploy personnel who normally operate in “special operation zones” such as Indian-controlled Kashmir to manage civilian protests in other parts of India. RAF Inspector General Seema Dhundhia told Indian outlet The Print that personnel from conflict zones “possess a different work environment and operational perspective, but sectors such as Delhi, Bihar, Assam, and Maharashtra require a distinct and balanced approach to crowd control and public order management.”

Eph emphasized that while the same playbook is being used, there remains a stark gap between the scale of repression in Delhi and Kashmir. “No three-year-old kid was killed in Delhi, but that was done in Kashmir. No students sitting in their homes got hit by pellet guns, but in Kashmir that had happened,” she said. She added that detained protesters in Delhi face only short-term detention, while detained Kashmiri activists are often held indefinitely without trial under the harsh Public Safety Act.

Mariya, a South Asian anti-colonial urbanism researcher who asked to only use her first name for security, noted that the pellet gun incident in Delhi highlights long-standing blind spots in India’s progressive movement. “For decades, thousands have been subjected to pellet gun violence in Kashmir. The failure to interlink the two is extremely disingenuous and exposes the nature of these protests,” she said. She added that there has been a striking lack of meaningful discussion of the ongoing crackdown in Kashmir, where Indian security forces detained more than 3,500 Kashmiris in a single massive operation this week, one of the largest crackdowns in the valley in recent years, carried out after an attack that killed a local police official.

Mishra confirmed that even as Delhi protesters have integrated calls for a range of progressive causes beyond educational reform, few have addressed the ongoing militarization of Kashmir. “We know many left-leaning liberals or even leftists, who will claim to be progressive [yet] … when it comes to the issue of Kashmir and self-determination, there is a faltering back towards traditional notions of nationalism,” she said. Still, Mariya argued that the decentralized nature of the current protest movement creates space for cross-issue solidarity, so long as participants are open to critical engagement. “A movement is not only its mass mobilisation but also the contradictions and debates that come out of it,” she said. “Failure to engage with it is to essentially kill the movement.”