‘Cockroach Janta Party’: Top Indian judge’s comment sparks satire, protest
Controversial remark by Supreme Court’s chief justice triggers a political movement, with tens of thousands of mainly Gen Z users signing in. New Delhi, India
Controversial remark by Supreme Court’s chief justice triggers a political movement, with tens of thousands of mainly Gen Z users signing in. New Delhi, India – Abhijeet Dipke has barely slept in the last 72 hours, fielding waves of messages on social media after a casual joke took an unexpected turn. The 30-year-old, a recent graduate in public relations from Boston University in the United States, finds himself leading a sweeping satirical political movement – the so-called Cockroach Janta Party (“janta” is people in Hindi) – being joined online by thousands of people with each passing day. On Friday, India’s chief justice of the Supreme Court, Surya Kant, said during an open court hearing that “parasites” were attacking the system, and equated the youngsters to cockroaches “who don’t get any employment and don’t have any place in a profession”. “There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists, and they start attacking everyone,” he said. Kant later clarified his remarks, saying his comment related to some people acquiring fraudulent degrees, and did not target India’s youth, whom he called “the pillars of a developed India”. Yet, his remarks drew considerable ire, mainly from Gen Z internet users as they battle large-scale unemployment, inflation, and bitter religious divides after 12 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. As outrage escalated across social media, Dipke posted on X on Saturday: “What if all cockroaches come together?” He followed up on his joke – and the desperately frustrated emotions behind it – by setting up a website and social media accounts for the Cockroach Janata Party – a play on Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – on Instagram “Those in power think citizens are cockroaches and parasites,” Dipke told Al Jazeera on Tuesday from Chicago.
“They should know that cockroaches breed in rotten places. That’s what India is today.” ‘Like a breath of fresh air’ The Cockroach Janta Party’s Instagram account has crossed 3 million followers in three days, and more than 350,000 people have signed up for the party’s membership via a Google form. Among the people who have signed up are political heavyweights, including Mahua Moitra, an opposition parliamentarian from West Bengal state, and Kirti Azad from neighbouring Bihar, also a former parliamentarian. Ashish Joshi, an Indian bureaucrat who retired from federal service earlier this year, was among the earliest to sign up for the party after he read about it on social media. “In the last decade, there has been a lot of fear in the country. And people are scared to speak,” Joshi told Al Jazeera, reflecting upon the Indian government’s crackdown on dissenters. ”India has become so hateful that the Cockroach Janta Party is like a breath of fresh air.” Equating youngsters with cockroaches has a flip side, 60-year-old Joshi insisted: “Cockroaches are resilient insects; they survive. And apparently they can form a party and crawl over your system.” ‘Deep-rooted antipathy’ In recent years, South Asia has been the ground zero of historic Gen Z protests, which have toppled governments in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. India, the world’s most populous nation, has been facing its own set of simmering issues. While its economy has ballooned, income inequality, coupled with unemployment and high cost of living, has reached historic highs. While India produces more than eight million graduates a year, the unemployment rate among them stands at 29.1 percent, nine times higher than for those who never attended school. More than a quarter of India’s population is Gen Z – also the biggest cohort in the world. Chief Justice Kant’s word, therefore, hit a raw nerve.
The BriefWire