In July, as supporters of the Cockroach movement took to Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in Delhi, incensed over exam-paper leaks and demanding the resignation of India’s education minister, the rest of the nation realised that for the first time since the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) came to power in 2014, the curse of inertia and the grip of fear had been smashed irrevocably. Prime minister Narendra Modi’s image of invincibility has been punctured.
People in India have been conditioned to believe in an idea of intense slow-burn protests that eventually bring change – but the Cockroaches have shown us that the revolution can be fast-tracked.
This time the Cockroaches are demanding the resignation of India’s chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, following reports in the Indian Express in late September that he had pushed through a purge of voter rolls. Round one of the Cockroach protests came to an end because the BJP was willing to sacrifice the education minister. Round two does not allow for such scapegoating. If Kumar goes, Modi must go too – it would be an open admission that the electoral system has been compromised.
The response of the BJP so far has been hysterical. The repressive apparatus of the state was out in full force: detentions and arrests of journalists, protesters being roughed up and beaten, an internet blackout in the capital. The Cockroach leader Abhijeet Dipke’s bravado in announcing his protest plans paid unexpected dividends the first time around. The second time, the continual broadcasting on social media by the three Cockroach leaders seemed like a lack of experience in organising and strategic thinking. Police forces detained them on touchdown at Delhi airport on the morning of the protest. They alleged that thousands of their members faced preventive detention or were not allowed to reach the capital city.
So at protests on 10 October, the CJP leaders were conspicuous by their absence. Only leftwing and Congress-allied student organisations, prominent gutsy young activists (Neha Bora, Aishe Ghosh, Gurmehar Kaur) and their elected political representatives held the ground and faced the worst of the police brutality.
The absence of the Cockroach leadership on the ground notwithstanding, the protests continued in pockets, eventually reaching a crescendo on 12 October. Heeding a call by Rahul Gandhi on behalf of the Congress-led opposition bloc, the streets of Delhi were filled in an act of defiance the like of which I have not witnessed in my lifetime. The state, however, seemed to have got the memo beforehand. The Delhi police and security forces numbered 90,000, 45 metro stations were closed in the inner city and trains to Delhi were cancelled. Student activists travelling to the capital were picked up en route from their railway carriages.
The following day, a small group of Cockroaches were arrested entering Jantar Mantar, which the Delhi police had banned from being used as a protest site. Two of the group’s leaders, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, were detained and subsequently sent to jail for five days.
Despite the high-handed approach of the police, the people are still clamouring for battle on the streets. Every screengrab, every video, every reel reinforces the feeling that we are witnessing a carnivalisation of the protests. The songs, the slogans, the sudden bursts of dancing, the satirical placards, the sheer joy of the crowds: this is Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque. What is the cause for such celebration? This: the state is evidently in retreat. People have begun to treat power as something to be ridiculed.
One of the most popular slogans has been Jab jab Modi darta hai, police ko aage karta hai (“Whenever Modi is afraid, he pushes the police forward”). The regime’s undiluted dread was most visible at Connaught Place in central Delhi on 16 October, when the CJP had called on people to gather at Central Park for a flag-waving celebration. The New Delhi Municipal Council shut down the park for two days and an elaborate fortification followed. The park was cordoned off, security personnel formed a human chain along the metal railings and 220 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces were deployed alongside the Rapid Action Force and the Delhi police.
Cockroach leader Abhijeet Dipke and communist student leader Neha Bora were both detained as they made their way towards Connaught Place. Neither was allowed to contact lawyers until late into the night, and lack of knowledge about their whereabouts caused panic online. Neha was released from detention the following morning, and Abhijeet could walk free on conditional bail.
For over a decade, the regime crushed students and dissenters by branding them anti-national and punishing them under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The genius of the Cockroach protest lay in something very simple – how could the state frame the waving of the Indian national flag as an anti-national activity? We now have a government that is not confident of its own legitimacy; it views the tricolour as a weapon when it is in the hands of its citizens.
The powerlessness of the state could also be seen in its desperation to police the online space: it summoned Meta officials over the summer and imposed an internet shutdown earlier this month. For a party that coasted to power with post-truth propaganda on WhatsApp, its undisputed dominance on X and heavy investment in keeping social media influencers on its payroll, the algorithms (or their oligarch owners) may well have turned. It is impossible to capture the entire social media ecosystem with threats and purchasing power alone.
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For the regime, it is a losing battle against the newfound visual grammar that has defined a wave of protests around the world: nothing is as seductive as young women defiantly clashing with uniformed police, or an opposition leader who climbs the barricades and waves the national flag. The German philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote about the tendency for fascism to lean into the aestheticisation of politics – today, looking at Delhi, he would be pleased to report back that the aesthetic can also be snatched back by the masses.
On 12 October, after the mass mobilisation, Gandhi addressed the media by saying: “This is tandav, Lord Shiva’s dance. There is no planning here”, and “This is the wedding procession of Shiva, anyone can join in”. These references to Shiva are a calculated manoeuvre. It is a nod to India’s majority Hindus who, time and time again, have been sold the lie that their sole protector is Modi.
Modi recently went Bhajan clubbing – a kind of rave setup with remixed Hindu devotional music – in a desperate attempt to establish his gen Z connections. But he may find the rug pulled from beneath his feet. Modi’s base rewarding the BJP election after election for weaponising their faith did not secure jobs for the next generation. And now it is their own children who are at the receiving end of the state’s violence.
Saving India cannot happen without pulling Hindus out from the vicious grip of extremist Hindutva. This is one unforeseen outcome of this protest and the wider movement. Whether it topples the government or not, it has shown it can unite people against the divisive force that is the BJP.
