India Comes Onboard: 'Cockroaches and the Global Gen Z Revolts pt. II

From Liberal Rage-baiting to Radical Politics

Dictatorial regimes globally have attempted to crush the Gen Z revolts by a combination of paternalistic care, mansplaining, and abject force – everything that satisfies the superego of the establishment. The diversity of measures used by governments to address the Gen Z revolts avoids the institutionalisation of any structural reform in the system. The Modi government  used a similar playbook in their response. An attempt to exhaust the protesters by intentionally distracting them from their cause was the first response, followed by a brutal and inhuman repression exhibited by the police brutalities from the July 20 until July 25. Finally, when those measures failed, the regime made an appeal of affection to emotionally manipulate the protesters. Ironically, one can find equivalences of these strategies scattered among various Gen Z protests globally. The 2025 protests against the Marcos government, accused of being corrupt and authoritarian in the Philippines, largely remained peaceful, with the Marcos government eventually engaging with the protest demands peacefully. In Kenya – the first country in Africa to experience Gen Z revolts in June 2024 triggered by a Finance Bill that sought to put higher taxes on basic commodities – the protesters who demanded the resignation of William Ruto, the Kenyan President, have been repeatedly hounded by the authorities and with many still seeking justice. In Morocco, over 2,000 cases have been filed against young protesters, mostly from the ‘Gen Z 212’-backed mobilisation against the government. In Mozambique, however, Gen Z protests against electoral irregularities and internet blackouts were met with an amnesty deal signed between the protestors and the government, which ended the protests but did not affect the results.

While governmental engagement tactics with Gen Z protests differed somewhat, the outcome was uniform: preserving the neoliberal system's prevailing stability. However, it is a testament to the success of the movement that the Prime Minister had to upload an Instagram reel at midnight, which many on the right-wing have celebrated as a grand gesture. Students, however, were unperturbed by the same and continued the agitation, with the CJP spokesperson declaring that if their demands are not met in full, the agitation would continue indefinitely. It is also important to mention by that time; the protests had spread to different corners of the country, with major cities – Kolkata, Mumbai, Patna, Bengaluru, Guwahati and Hyderabad along with others – joining in from around the July 22 and 23. In Bihar, many CPIML-Liberation activists were detained on the eve of the July 25 Bihar Bandh; and in Patna, the situation was such that a member of the Bihar police personnel was seen running towards protesters with an AK-47 during the protests in Patna on July 27. In Assam, three young men were arrested because they started a WhatsApp group to organise a CJP linked protest. This is besides other cases registered against demonstrators on various occasions during the period of the CJP protests. An activist from Bihar, recollecting his experience of those days, stated:

The crowd that came up on the street was completely new. These were kids with no political training, and many of them had probably ventured out of their homes for the first time. Note that many of them did not know what could happen to them if the police lathi charges, or the extent of damage that a pellet gun or a tear gas can do. I believe, it is this fearlessness, this negligence, that made them so fearless. As activists then, we have to do two things: manage the movement and also manage these kids. It was a beautiful experience, but also a dangerous one.

Another scholar-activist from Kolkata noted:

As a generational cohort, Gen Z introduced a distinctive discursive repertoire into Kolkata’s protest ecology. Initiated by re-signifying a judicial epithet: cockroaches as a collective badge of defiance, while deploying meme-saturated, visually iterative, and digitally networked forms of claim-making. This protest transcended conventional Left organisational repertoires.

The idea of accountability has been a major sticking point in this movement,  particularly surrounding the deaths of students caused by the anxiety and stress that followed the NEET paper leaks. Accountability, in fact, has been a major focus of global Gen Z protests. Be it in Serbia – where young people erupted over the role of systemic corruption and institutional negligence in the collapse of a canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024 killing 16 people – or in the Maldives – where the injury of a young woman and the alleged role of the government in protecting politically connected potential perpetrators – young protesters have repeatedly pursued the promise of accountability that stands as a cornerstone of liberal bourgeoisie parliamentary governments. It is the demand for accountability that makes such movements gain the much-needed support from celebrities, many of whom rarely spoke up to support dissenting voices in other cases. For example, while the participation of Arundhati Roy, Shabana Azmi, Prakash Raj – who slept with the protesters on the night of July 19 –, Vishal Dadlani, and Naseeruddin Shah was expected, the cockroaches got the support of other celebrities as well from the Indian movie circles.

Advocating for accountability without highlighting the political nature of a particular governmental setup ends up equating typical neoliberal governments with far-right governments. The radical approach towards both these kinds of governmental structures demands different strategies, which though similar are not alike. Similar to the Serbian movement against the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which had been supported by pensioners, doctors, and even motorcycle clubs, the cockroaches were also supported by a wide section of the left political formations and liberal civil society. But to homogenise the two experiences would be a fatal error that disregards the particular nature of the BJP government. The Gen Z protests in India were against a government that has been hyperactive in pursuing vindictive agendas against students, academics, trade unionists, and public intellectuals. To effectively counter these measures, a Gen Z protest needs to become more than ‘merely a Gen Z protest’. Failing to do so – i.e. being restricted to a certain issue – makes Gen Z movements severely restricted in their outlook and vision, where the very qualities that made them popular – being diffuse, leaderless and organised online – begin to act against them and limiting them.

The Global Gen Z protests have shown that governments need to look at young people as more than angry citizens but need to engage with them as peers. It has been shown that young people can become a lethal force when coupled with the support of the working class and rational-thinking masses. Any Gen Z protest is not managed only by young protesters but also encapsulates the labour of countless workers, who are often not accorded the respect and dignity that they deserve. There were doctors who set up temporary clinics at the protest site, as well as several blue-collar workers who travelled from other states to become part of the protest. These participants enabled the transformation of the movement from being only a students’ protest to a movement led by general citizens. Some Gen Z activists have even suggested that the label ‘Gen Z’ itself on such movements stands as a misnomer because it relegates the important organisational and ideological work done by others.  The gig workers who delivered food to Jantar Mantar or the autorickshaw drivers who made it possible for young people to reach the protest site amidst increasing police patrolling. A taxi driver at Delhi’s Connaught Place on the afternoon of July 21 said:  

Bachcho ko nahi marna chahiye tha, unhone madhumakkhi k chatte par paththar mar dia hai ab [They should not have beaten up the kids, now they have thrown a stone at a beehive]. Not only kids, but they have also made life difficult for us as well with the new taxation rules on commercial vehicles and the E20 fuel. You know what they should do now, just resign and call for a fresh election. Better they ask these kids to govern because they understand the issue with accountability much more than the government does.

Accountability, it is true, became the most important factor that acted as a bridge between various sections of the civil society. The demand for accountability without political conviction often helps in camouflaging the political nature of a protest movement and gives in to liberal rage-baiting, one that even at times garners the support of those who would otherwise sit on the right-side of the political spectrum. It also helps in undermining the role of the left, which played a key role in the protests. Satarupa, the General Secretary of the Jawaharlal Nehru Students’ Union (JNUSU) during the 2015-16 student movement, noted:

The placards and banners reflected various issues and ideologies. The slogans echoed something rare – a combination of revolutionary slogans like ‘Inqilab Zindabaad’ or ‘Jai Bheem’ and, on the other hand, nationalistic slogans like ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’. I see this protest as not only seeking accountability from the ruling power or displaying anger for its many wrong deeds; I see this protest telling both the ruling power and the political practitioners something more: which is, a reminder to India’s pluralistic foundation and practices by their sheer non-monolithic presence. It is a reminder that a unification comes when the plural being in us and its pluralistic aspirations are satisfied, not when it is suppressed. This message is as important for India’s opposition, which is talking about the ‘Opposition’s Unity’ as much as it is important for the ruling BJP to understand and learn to respect the country’s diversity.

One of the most important issues highlighted by the protests was the lack of material unity within the opposition. Rahul Gandhi, India’s leader of the opposition in parliament, who was detained and dragged by the police while protesting in front of the PM residence, did not visit the Jantar Mantar protest site even once. This was despite most of the opposition leaders visiting and extending direct support to the protesters, including the Left parties and other Gandhian socialist parties. The INC did send some representatives, but Rahul Gandhi’s physical presence, as most would agree, holds a different political positioning, especially within the electoral realm. 

While the Cockroach protests show hope, it is equally important to highlight the issues that became apparent during the protests – misogynistic posters, cases of mob mentality, and the use of patriarchal language – underscoring the need for long-term cultural engagement. It is also important to discuss that many of the Instagram reels that went viral during the protest used queer people and slangs directed at them as content, which did not go down well with radical LGBTQ+ activists. There were also issues surrounding the complete absence of a discourse on issues such as hawker evictions in West Bengal and farmers’ unions’ resistance to the India-US Free Trade Agreement. There was also a concerning silence on the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula at the CJP protest site, which is deeply disturbing for a movement that emphasised the suicides of students owing to institutional failure. It was also quite dissatisfying to notice the inadequate presence of S. Anitha as a symbol of the Dalit resistance against the Indian educational system, who was the first to lead the charge against the NEET, filing a case against it, and before committing suicide in 2017.

The cockroach protests, despite these shortcomings, brought back some of the most pertinent, longstanding issues related to the crushing of dissent in India to prime-time debates. One poster said: ‘Umar Khalid walked, so we could run’. Another one noted: ‘Jab Jab Modi Darta Hai, Police ko Agey Karta Hai’ (Whenever Modi is scared, he sends the police). These posters exhibited the political nature of the cockroach protests, which many within the right-wing ecosystem and the CJP itself continue to denounce. This leads one back to the early days of the CJP, when a Gen Z journalist from Nepal had warned the CJP of being wary about going down the path of the AAP or other such liberal political outlets highlighting the inaccessibility of the CJP’s primary social media platform, Instagram, in rural India. The CJP, it seems, has overcome some concerns, but is yet to address some of the more important concerns: the most important one out of many is regarding its political positioning, if any. This would also be a proper response to the absence of India’s primary oppositional political force from the protests. Commenting on the role of the left in this context, Sai Balaji of the AISA noted:

We had no issue with being only a part of the movement and had no intention of being so-called ‘leaders’. The movement, nevertheless, with time, transgressed the control of every organisational setup, be it Sonam Wangchuk, the CJP or even the AISA. In some places, we organised demonstrations with the CJP, while in other places, we did so independently, but in all the cases, we were clear that we were a part of the movement and not its sole leaders. In the ‘whole’ of the movement, each one of us has a role to play, and we played ours.

Demonstrations targeting the Modi government are a common occurrence. But the Gen Z protest remains a special case because – as most would agree – this was a movement that has resulted in direct tangible success, and the regime has had to shed its facade of being a government that remains unmoved by genuine citizen concerns. The cockroaches, however, should remember that long-term institutional changes have only been achieved when the movement has gone beyond its initial demands. In Serbia, for example, it is only recently that President Aleksandar Vucic declared he would step down after 18 months of agitation against him. Experience in Bangladesh shows that student movements do not directly result in electoral victories, while Nepal has shown that student movements can cause very reformist political gains. It was only in Sri Lanka that one could see a rapid reversal of the fortunes of the left with the victory of Dissanayake. Even though these movements demonstrate the youth’s endorsement of a more inclusive and participatory form of democratic governance, their failures to result in much sustained and radical social changes until now indicate a general absence of a clear strategy for translating protest demands into legislative priorities. During the cockroach protests, it was frequently emphasised that the mobilisation had reached such magnitude because it was not an explicitly political movement.

Some argue digitally accelerated movements grow at a faster than the pace with which they can build internal leadership and negotiation capacity, which often makes them great at disrupting but weak at succession and governance. These movements reject formal leadership positions – which often becomes critical to their success and popularity – but this can leave a power vacuum that established parties, religious networks, or even the army may, at times, desire to fill. Some of these movements evolve into political parties – such as Chile’s Frente Amplio and Nepal’s Rastriya Swatantra Party – while others continue to function as pressure groups pursuing targeted reforms; CJP currently resembles the latter. But being a watchdog without political conviction often results in aiding the far-right, as was seen in India with the Anna Movement in 2014. This is where the importance of radical organising comes in. The left has been instrumental in bringing forth demands that speak about a total overhaul of the education infrastructure – most important of which is the demand focused on the scraping of the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the National Education Policy (NEP) that was previously supported by some individuals associated with the protests – but when the parliamentary left is on a decline, allies like the CJP can indeed by extremely helpful even though its leaders have asserted that they desire to remain as a pressure group only. Whether the Cockroach movement sustains itself as a political force remains an open question. Many Gen Z movements over the past few years have either dissipated, or have been co-opted by mainstream reformist forces, or have become trapped within the very institutional logics they initially sought to challenge. Yet to judge the protests solely by their immediate outcomes would be to neglect their historical significance. They exposed the fragility of authoritarian political orders that rely upon surveillance and manufactured consent, while revealing the capacity of a ‘digital’ generation to use humour as a form of dissent and turn anger into collective action. The CJP has already become a phenomenon in India inspiring Gen Alpha to protest against India’s dilapidating schooling infrastructure aas well as the formation of ‘E20 Janta Party’.

For the Indian left, the lesson is neither to romanticise nor dismiss this movement, but to engage with it critically, recognising its role in influencing the future of democratic politics. It needs to steer the movement towards radical organisational dynamics, negotiating with both historic forms of struggle and the new political languages that are being adopted by the younger generations under neoliberalism and the far right. Whether this moment represents the spark of a matchstick, or the beginning of a long wildfire against capital, will depend upon the ability of these new and emerging solidarities to outlive the protest and issue that birthed them.

Notes

[1] One can look at this news report to get a sense of Wangchuk’s shifting political allegiances: The Statesman. (2026, August 1). ‘Have we become so narrow-minded?’: Sonam Wangchuk hits back at critics over Railways praise, renews demands for protesting students. https://www.thestatesman.com/india/have-we-become-so-narrow-minded-sonam-wangchuk-hits-back-at-critics-over-railways-praise-renews-demands-for-protesting-students-1503623198.html