Earlier this month, more than 20,000 supporters cheered as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood triumphantly with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium. Modi, who has ruled India for more than twelve years, was repeatedly described by the press during his visit as the popular leader of the world’s largest democracy. By the end of the month, the actions of hundreds of thousands of angry students had forced the Modi regime to make concessions to the most significant mass movement in India in a long time.
Following dramatic wins in regional elections earlier in the year, including in the historically left-wing dominated state of West Bengal, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian People’s Party) seemed stronger than ever. But the results papered over a growing crack of discontent, mainly among young people.
Young people have not benefited from the economic improvements Modi likes to tout. Among graduates aged under 30, 11 million out of 63 million are unemployed. In a now-infamous speech in May, India’s chief justice, Surya Kant, referred to these unemployed youth as “cockroaches” and “parasites” who would rather become activists than join the workforce. These remarks quickly became a meme and spurred the formation of the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) by US-based student Abhijeet Dipke. Membership criteria for the CJP include being “unemployed, lazy, chronically online, and possessing an ability to rant professionally”. The party gathered millions of Instagram followers in its first few weeks, becoming a symbol of dissent.
Online campaigning became a protest movement in June. The catalyst for the protests was the leak of the 2026 National Eligibility cum Entrance Test papers. Around 2.3 million students were taking this exam with the hope of securing one of the 137,000 places at India’s medical and dental schools. For children of working- and middle-class families, this is a pathway to a stable and comfortable life, and their families often incur significant debt to give their children the opportunity to take the test.
Instead of the test going ahead, though, students this year were told it would be delayed due to a leak. Such leaks have happened 127 times under Modi’s rule, usually as a result of wealthy people seeking and gaining access to the test questions in advance and the questions then becoming public. This delay pushed many students, already under intense pressure, over the edge, with at least twenty taking their own lives. This tragedy, and the circumstances surrounding it, unleashed the movement.
With the help of local communist student groups, such as the All India Students’ Association and the Students’ Federation of India, the CJP organised a series of protests in Delhi, the capital, starting in early June. Despite being referred to as “terrorists” by Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the protests grew. Then, on 28 June, prominent activist Sonam Wangchuk and six students began an indefinite hunger strike, bringing widespread attention to the cause.
Although the movement initially called only for administrative changes and the removal of Pradhan, it broadened to demand the release of detained protesters and the removal of Modi himself, a wide range of anti-Modi chants being taken up by protesters on the streets of Delhi. Like other uprisings over the last few years, slogans to do with the liberation of Palestine and opposing the government’s ties to Israel were raised by the left of the movement. Then, on 20 July, the movement really took off.
To mark the first day of the new parliamentary session, the CJP announced it would march on parliament. The government tried to stop the gathering by imposing internet shutdowns, but tens of thousands gathered anyway. Some of Delhi’s largest metro stations were closed to restrict movement, but the trapped participants staged their own protests anyway. Students faced attacks from police with batons, tear gas, water cannons and pellet guns, and several women reported being groped by the officers and other security forces.
Despite this, protesters marched all the way to the parliament, where they were stopped by security agents wielding AK-47s. Modi was whisked away to safety as the demonstrations continued into the night.
Police violence against urban, middle-class Hindus is not new, but the BJP has tried to avoid it over the past twelve years. Many of the police’s tactics have been refined against “outgroups” in Indian society: left-wing organisations, farmers and, most prominently, Muslims, especially in Kashmir, where the army and the Central Armed Police Forces have been given free rein to terrorise the local population.
The events of 20 July sparked a fire across the country. Similar protests occurred in other major cities. Groups of workers and activists donated so much food to the protesters that the CJP had to ask them to stop as it was going to waste. Links were also made to the ongoing farmers’ struggle, as thousands of farmers from Haryana and Punjab prepared to march to Delhi to protest a recent trade deal struck with the US. Solidarity protests also occurred in major cities outside of India.
The protests grew, with hundreds of thousands marching in cities throughout India on 25 July. Faced with this, the government had to quickly change course. Out of options, and with the ghosts of the recently ousted regimes in Bangladesh and Nepal acting as a warning of what further repression may unleash, Modi went to the discussion table with the cockroach leaders.
Following meetings with Dipke and other leading figures, Pradhan announced his resignation, about 24 hours after government sources had claimed he was defiant and would fight on. The mass protests turned into mass street parties as people celebrated their victory. In the midst of the celebrations, however, some were arguing to demand more—no de-escalation until Modi goes. The movement was faced with a choice: build on the momentum or wrap up the actions.
Unfortunately, the leadership opted for the latter. Soon after the resignation, the CJP announced that their demands had been met and it was time to go home. Pradhan was gone, the BJP had agreed to unspecified education reforms, and the arrested protesters would be released—that was sufficient for the CJP leaders. The announcement did not reflect the strength of the movement. Weeks of protests had been powerful and unifying, and many of those who had participated had been radicalised. But the CJP leaders were no radicals. They baulked at the idea of expanding the demands and challenging the government in its entirety.
Dipke himself had begun his political career in the centrist, nationalist Aam Aadmi Party as a social media creator. During the protests, the CJP leaders repeatedly emphasised that their intention was not to threaten the system. As early as May, Dipke dismissed comparisons between the cockroach movement and Gen Z revolutions in Bangladesh and Nepal as “insults”, insisting his movement was all about respecting the constitution and the Indian nation.
Added to this, the social base of the movement was urban intellectuals and middle-class students and, although this layer could be explosive, without political leadership it was not spontaneously radical.
Unfortunately, however, education reforms and a change of personnel at the top are not enough to resolve the problem underpinning the exam leaks. The leaks, along with the exams themselves, are a reflection of the extreme class divide in Indian capitalism—the access to power the wealthy take for granted and the limited opportunities open to the poor.
India is a society where Mukesh Ambani, one of the richest people in the world, lives in a $4 billion luxury property built on top of a former orphanage. India is also a society where less than ten kilometres away from this property lies Dharavi, the third largest slum in the world, where around a million people live in poverty.
The state in India, like everywhere else, facilitates the accumulation of wealth at the top, while doing the bare minimum for workers and the poor. Reforms can’t change this, only a radical movement led by organised workers can hope to challenge the power of the capitalists and their repressive state, and lay the basis for a more equal society. Unfortunately, the number of people organised around these sorts of politics in India is, as in much of the world, too small to make much of a difference.
What has been highlighted, though, is the existing leadership’s limitations. After getting the CJP to demobilise the protests, the state has begun taking its revenge, with 400 protesters now arrested in the state of Bihar, and photos of protesters being published by the police. In response, the CJP has threatened to resume the protests.
Regardless of the outcome, large numbers of people in India have been shaken by this movement. The Gen Z protests have proven definitively that mass rebellion in India is still possible today, even under a fascist government. This is a hopeful development.
