Beyond millennial cynics and hopefuls, the grand Gen Z debut

When Abhijeet Dipke announced that the Cockroach Janta Party would be undertaking a protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar site starting June 20, 2026, there was a fair amount of optimism among a small section of liberal millennials who are critical of the BJP. 

At the start of the summer, the party seemed to have reached its strongest position in years. Whatever ground it had ceded in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, it more than made up for it by not just winning key states of Maharashtra, Haryana, Bihar, Delhi and, most recently, West Bengal. It wasn’t just winning states where it was expected to be challenged; it also co-opted or broke a whole gallery of regional political parties along the way. 

In the eyes of BJP’s critics, if there ever was a cinematic moment where, against the run of the play, a hero rises when all hope is lost, it was this. When Chief Justice Surya Kant’s comment likened India’s unemployed youth to ‘parasites’ and ‘cockroaches’, Abhijeet Dipke created the satirical ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ as a joke. For Gen Z, which was raised on social media meta-irony, owning cringe and self-roasts, embracing the label of ‘cockroach’ became both a defiant and fun act. 

Playing out against the backdrop of the NEET paper leak and the CBSE OSM controversy, what followed was a gamification of Gen-Z political discourse where memes flew as the CJP page exploded on Instagram, the primary digital address of the cohort. 

The afore-mentioned millennials were already getting excited. “Will the Cockroach Janta Party contest elections? It does have the word ‘party’ in its name!” “Do you think it has a chance?” Some were already giddily whispering or speculating on social media. It was a section of mostly savarna, urban-residing, intergenerationally literate and wealthy professional class which has always sought some vague white-knight to ‘clean up’ or shake the political system. It is typically suspicious of the entire political class, broad-brushing across party lines and aloof from policy and processes, and suspicious of poor and marginalised voter motivations. Then there were professional cynics, also millennials and made up from more or less the same cohort – always eager to critique any deviations from unattainable ideological standards. They got busy issuing forth critical dismissives at this premature exuberance on Facebook, X and weekend house parties. 

This was a familiar face-off, millennial shadow-boxing. An urban, professional class made up of a generation that was constantly posturing, looking for one-upmanship, and landing the final mic-drop in an argument. CJP was just the latest talking point in this now familiar routine back-and-forth among urban millennials rendered electorally irrelevant in the polling arithmetic. 

On Saturday, June 20, when CJP started its day-long protest at Jantar Mantar, its hopium-cheerleaders were disappointed when barely a few hundred from its then over 20 million Instagram following turned up in person. Furthermore, a sizable section of the crowd was actually media professionals and content-creators who had come to the site out of a mix of social curiosity and possible newsworthy material, rather than Gen-Z protestors. Cynics like myself, trained and honed in the art of hopium deflation, turned around and gave a told-you-so look around the proverbial room. 

But the CJP persevered, occupied Jantar Mantar and extended its protest. Sonam Wangchuk joined the site and announced an indefinite hunger strike. 

But big crowds still proved elusive. 

Most millennials who would be glad to see accountability sought from Modi and the BJP being humbled also stayed wary and away from the CJP. Videos of (then) CJP spokesperson Vijeta Dahiya dancing on the stage went viral and were subject to derision and ridicule. Dipke’s public statements were micro-analysed; the BJP social-media sphere was mocking the CJP for being out-of-their-league opportunists or worse, agents of AAP or foreign actors. Even Sonam Wangchuk appeared in meme pages making fun of his hunger strike. 

There seemed to be no cinematic culmination in store, only a slow, embarrassing public fizzling out of a social media trend mistaken to be a political kickstarter campaign. 

Then slowly, it happened. 

Things started to shift. Imperceptible at first but gaining ground unmistakably. As images of Sonam's hunger strike and a parallel one by six students from AISA, the student wing of CPI(ML), started aggregating on the algorithm, something started to move. Maybe it was the stubbornness of the protest not to taper off; maybe it was the absolute arrogance of the government, which did not even do the minimum political courtesy of suggesting a dialogue or giving an off-ramp. The reasons will be debated and analysed for years to come, but the reaction was unmistakable. Suddenly, momentum shifted towards the protest. Hopium-liberals started cheering; the cynics rolled their eyes. The band played on.

Somewhere beyond this weary dance, a new generational cohort was quietly stepping onto the stage. The brainrot memes and edits making fun of the protest were, in hindsight, not to be understood literally. It was the first evidence of political traction among Gen Z. Their rules of engagement are very different. They grew up online, under the shadow of the pandemic quarantines, on foul-mouthed livestreams, abusive roasts, self-deprecatory humour and prioritising ‘dank’ edginess, irony and even frivolity over formal and direct communication. If millennials had spent an inordinate amount of online time trying to learn political correctness and debating rules of ‘doing better’, Gen Z swung in the opposite direction. Heaviness to lightness, a liberating carefreeness with their own vocabulary that older folks simply did not understand. 

And so the momentum now shifted beyond the anti-BJP millennials who were either hopium-addicted and serial cynics, to a broader cross-section of the hitherto apolitical Gen Z. ‘Save Sonam’ became a digital rallying cry. Many older folks were puzzled at how Sonam had become such an integral Gen Z icon overnight. Looking back at how the events unfolded later, it would appear Sonam was incidental to the mobilising, not central. Gen Z loyalties and motivations are not to be read so literally. 

As bodies started filling into Jantar Mantar, there also grew dread. Surely the government, known for its heavy hand (think flashbacks from police attacks in the Jamia Millia Islamia library and the AMU campus), was not going to just sit back and watch the current protest acquire political momentum? 

Maybe that dread spurred some more people on. The desire to make a stand, even if risky and utterly futile. As I entered Jantar Mantar on Friday night, July 17, it appeared heavy and anxious. I saw the young protestors; many looked nervous. As a cynic, I wondered how they would fare against the ruthlessness of the administration. I was convinced the state would brush them aside with ease and try to shut the whole protest down. 

Early the next morning on Saturday, July 18, Sonam Wangchuk was forcibly picked up by Delhi Police from the Jantar Mantar stage and taken to Safdarjung Hospital. 

Here we go, the hardened cynics opined; revolutions do not spring up from memes and satire, sadly. 

Devoid of their talisman, the CJP protest felt very vulnerable. Chandrashekhar Azad emerged at the protest site, lifting spirits. His Bhim Army volunteers and supporters lent a distinctly Ambedkarite colour to Jantar Mantar. Youngsters with blue scarves raising slogans of ‘Jai Bhim’ defiantly stood next to ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ shouting young comrades; surely many AAP, Congress, and even some BJP voters too were among the mix. A diverse crowd, including older millennials who came in for solidarity, was enough to get the Hopium-liberals excited. They were looking forward to the Sansad march set for Monday, July 20. They were sharing WhatsApp forwards and reels about joining in. Cynical millennials were not so sure. There was no way the state would let this happen. They talked about the dangers of police brutality, dismissed the march enthusiasm as a product of ‘fomo’. “No one will come, organisers will get arrested, this whole thing will be over tomorrow just wait and watch.”

Meanwhile, what the cynics and hopeful millennials had both missed then was that the signs were already there. Unnoticed, more Gen Z started sharing stories about joining the Sansad march. Meme pages that were making fun of Sonam Wangchuk and Abhijeet Dipke suddenly shifted tone and started issuing calls to action. Their mobilisation happened beyond the millennial gaze. Was it on Discord? Telegram groups? Reddit? Or good old-fashioned WhatsApp groups? We don’t fully understand yet how they mobilised in such large numbers. But a massive section of Gen Z was already getting ready to make its street debut. 

It was thanks to the fact that the BJP had missed a trick in its quest to project strength. To ignore CJP and not legitimise it by acknowledging its existence (while waiting for it to collapse) was perhaps a good strategy to begin with. But by not softening over the lengthy hunger strike and then by forcefully picking up Sonam, all the while refusing to even offer a courtesy dialogue to CJP, came off as deeply arrogant. 

And arrogance (or its perception) is something Indian democracy has a record of punishing time and again. This time it would fall to Gen Z. 

This was Gen Z’s first political encounter with the state. Young cockroaches, youth in their late teens and twenties, showed up in swarms. Most coming from lower middle-class homes, children of parents working precarious jobs, clerical, unglamorous jobs, small businesses and shops, in and around the greater NCR and beyond. Some students taking trains from villages and small towns in distant states showed up to be counted. Young folks for whom higher education is the only realistic pathway to the upward mobility they find on their Jio-5G-enabled Instagram feed. Sprinkled in among them, sparse but surely present, were NCR's IB-school educated elite youth with their bandanas and revolution fit vibe-checked. 

Joining them were an assorted motley of older professionals, folks with careers and families, who had been completely alienated by the political discourse of their own family and peer social circles. Tired of being cyclically hopeful or cynical, they showed up too alone or with a handful of friends. Atomised, individuated citizens joining the crowd like proverbial drops in the bucket that make up a flood. 

And a flood spilt out onto the streets, a crowd far beyond the prediction of perhaps both the organisers of the march and the Delhi Police deployed to stop it. Against the fog of the internet shutdown and roadblocks in the area, the streets leading to the parliament became a war zone. Tear gas shells flew, lathi charges broke bodies indiscriminately, and even the sadistic use of pellet guns and sticks with nails was thrown into the mix. 

A brainrot generation, considered apolitical, lazy and unserious, had now been yanked out of their algorithm-bubble with the brute, cold force of state overreach. With sadness and empathy, the cynics whispered, ‘this is what we were afraid of, what else did you think would happen?’

Then it started taking shape – a strange alchemy taking hold at Jantar Mantar. If political arrogance had brought the cockroaches to the ground, the violence steeled their resolve. 

Instead of breaking them, most unexpectedly they returned in bigger numbers the next day. As the political and discursive ramifications of the police brutality rippled far beyond Lutyens’ Delhi and spilt into the drawing rooms and WhatsApp groups across the country, even hardened BJP supporters found themselves without a convincing narrative to spin. Parents across the country, horrified at the visuals of students being battered, questioned their political allegiances. The excessive force, the inexplicable shielding of the Education Minister and the non-response to a simple call for political accountability – now no longer appeared as a flex of strength. It felt like the folly of an overconfident regime that had overplayed its hand and exposed its frailty. There could only be a retreat from hereon in.

Meanwhile, Jantar Mantar was transforming itself from the sanitised, state-sanctioned protest site to the living-breathing lungs pumping democratic belief into the acrid air of the capital. Despite the threat of brutal reprisals getting repeated, the cockroaches kept flooding in. 

Gone was the dread of the nights before; now there was joy. Festivity. War zone veterans of Delhi’s streets now swapped stories of dodging tear-gas shells and counted bruises from the lathi blows. As the social media algorithms flooded with clips from the violence, more cockroaches got provoked into action and not dulled into despair. 

Volunteers started coming in too, with food, medicines, others from different cities ordering supplies from Swiggy and Zomato for the cockroaches. Their energy, almost magic itself, started transforming Jantar Mantar from a site under siege to the citadel of the Gen-Z. Some start organising queues for orderly conduct, others start picking up garbage, others still armed with brooms cleaning the sloshy gutters while donning sneakers worth Rs 20,000 if not more, not a care in the world – they were under the spell. 

Walking around Jantar Mantar, I was struck by the powerful sense of community. People fanning strangers for hours to give some relief from the hot, humid weather. Everyone is eager to help, to share, to cooperate. Women are welcome at the site. They come in large numbers and at all hours. No one feels unsafe or cornered despite maddening crowds smooshed together in the small confines of Jantar Mantar. And more keep showing up. Parents with toddlers. Differently abled and the elderly. They all come. 

But Jantar Mantar belonged to the young. To the cockroaches. They make dance reels in front of paramilitary forces in full riot gear. They walk up to the police and ask nonsense, absurd questions for vibes. They stand tall bearing posters that are memes yanked out of the screen and transposed on paper. Their language is irreverent, their humour biting. “Beta show respect to your elders” is not a message that cuts any ice with this lot. Heathens truly. Barbarians. Running around graffitiing abuses and chanting slurs at Modi. No one is mourning the loss of tehzeeb. 

“Neem ka patta kadwa hai, Narendra Modi ****** hai”, shouts the crowd – men and women, young and old. 

This is not callous name-calling. This is the collective exhaling of people who were caged by the aura of a man so invulnerable, so above critique, that he himself suggested that he was perhaps of divine origin. A man so protected that even his critics knew the unspoken guideline: critique the party but not the man. The ones who didn’t listen were mobbed on social media, hounded by news anchors, heckled on roads and harassed in courts.

And now, it all came crashing down in a week. Modi was human after all. If any doubt was left, the posters, the reels and edits settled it. Under pressure, in an unprecedented move, the Prime Minister dropped ‘Instagram-style’ videos for the youth. Within hours, it became meme-fodder for a generation that has no restraint. The mainstream news media, always an eager lackey to the regime, started its nth campaign to delegitimise the protest. Now crying foul over the language used and the threat of violence from the protesters. Sadly for them, these cockroaches do not watch the TV news. They do not consider it news. They see it as bad reality TV. And when they encounter their news crews, they crowd and heckle them with a dismissal that is more damaging than falling TRPs. The cockroaches now ran the show. 

As protest sites started to proliferate in other cities, the Jantar Mantar mood reproduced itself. The protest sites became a selfie point, a space to make dance reels and shoot trends. Gen Z refused to be dragged into the world of adults. They saw its savagery and decided to face its absurdity with their own dogged ‘delulu’.  Their whole skibidi vibe being so whack that veterans of BJP’s infamous IT cell and troll squads were left wondering on just how to even respond. Defeatism crept into their ecosystem; many started advocating that their own government sack the Education Minister and cut losses before the protests grew even bigger. 

Finally, on July 25, Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, and the BJP accepted all the demands of the CJP, bringing a closure to the protest. This was an unprecedented success in the Modi years – the first resignation of a minister under pressure from the people. 

The hopium-liberal millennials cheered and sang paeans to democracy and drew up wishlists for future protests and political action. The cynics responded with their list of complaints against CJP leadership, and warned of impending social media surveillance and state repression. As Jantar Mantar wound up, the millennial shadow-boxing for the last word restarted. It is now even more inconsequential than it was a month ago. The tired dance, almost boring now, plays out in irrelevance around the social media campfires where political party-affiliated IT cells and ideological camps come together to jostle. 

Gen Z checks out. Its crowds melt away back to their social media algorithms from where they watch us, behind the veneer of brainrot. 

But whose crowd was it? Who did Gen Z respond to? To Sonam? To CJP? The answer was not too clear. They were broadly affiliated to the call by Abhijeet Dipke and CJP, but they ran on their own fuel cells at Jantar Mantar. This protest was not an issue anchored or tied to a minister, though that is what it would appear superficially. This was a generational defiance – a youth referendum. The resignation of the Education Minister will not placate this swarm, only disperse it for now. 

Many questions linger. If Gen Z, hitherto considered apolitical, is indeed so politically charged, then what are its politics? It is clear that it does not hold the icon of Modi in awe. Nor does it buy the wholesale propaganda of ‘Amrit kaal’. They see the flaws of the government and cannot be intimidated to keep quiet. What is not so clear is whether it shares the communal and casteist agenda of the regime? Already, an anti-reservation discourse is being amplified by the BJP-aligned social media. Will Gen Z see through this as easily as it did with Modi’s promises and assurances these past weeks? 

More immediately, what will be CJP’s next agenda? Will they take up NAAC? NEP? Privatisation of universities? Caste-discrimination and sexual harassment cover-ups on campuses? Or something else? They haven’t yet clarified. Importantly, when they do lay out their plan, will Gen Z return to the streets for them? At this point, it is anyone’s guess. 

The only thing for certain is that the tedious jugalbandi of urban liberal millennial cynics and hopefuls, like the past decade of farming discourse through organised political narrative manufacturing, is now suddenly outdated. It has aged a decade or more in less than a week. 

The Gen Zs are here. We now play by their rules. This is their yard. These are their streets now.

Ravikant Kisana is an author, academic, and culture critic who goes by the moniker ‘Buffalo Intellectual’ on Instagram.