India’s Cockroach Janta party protest victory signals trouble ahead for Modi

Cockroach Janta party supporters in New Delhi on Saturday. Their core demand, for Dharmendra Pradhan to resign, has been achieved. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters View image in fullscreen Cockroach Janta party supporters in New Delhi on Saturday. Their core demand, for Dharmendra Pradhan to resign, has been achieved. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters Analysis India’s Cockroach Janta party protest victory signals trouble ahead for Modi Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi Ally forced to resign, with opposition parties reinvigorated and strongman leader’s grip over media channels rocked Even the night before Narendra Modi accepted the resignation of his education minister, India’s prime minister appeared confident that the largest mass uprising to take place in his 12 years in power would do little to rattle his government. ‘I will die for this cause’: how India’s cockroach meme became the biggest challenge to Modi’s grip on power Read more Addressing his “young friends” in a late-night Instagram selfie reel on Friday, he thanked the people – who were mobilised en masse across the country , shouting anti-government slogans – for their “thoughtful suggestions”. Less than 24 hours later, Modi, who has fiercely cultivated his strongman image for years, had bowed to public pressure and accepted the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan . It was, say analysts, the remarkable humbling of a government that has ruled with almost untouchable impunity since 2014. Over that past week, a gen Z movement that called itself the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) mobilised unprecedented protests in the name of justice for millions of young people, after the leaking of a crucial exam paper forced 2 million students to resit the test and was blamed for more than a dozen suicides. The resignation of Pradhan, Modi’s loyal political ally, remained their first and foremost demand for accountability, even as the protests expanded into a wider fight for democracy. Yet Pradhan went unmentioned by Modi in his Instagram address. 0:51 ‘Cockroach’ movement: thousands march in anti-government protest in New Delhi On Saturday morning, more people than ever were pouring into Delhi’s historic Jantar Mantar site – the centre of the protests – and unrest was spreading fast to other cities, including states ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). It was not only physical space that had been captured by the cockroach movement. Since coming to power, the BJP has proved enormously effective at capturing the online narrative, deploying its powerful, highly organised IT cell to mobilise and attack any perceived criticism of the government, whether it came from citizens, politicians or journalists. But this proved no match for the millions of gen Z memes and reels that began to flood Instagram over this past week, fearlessly insulting Modi and pillorying the government, each more creative and incendiary than the next. Modi’s last-ditch attempts to speak directly to the youth on Instagram were simply me