The Cockroach Republic: A Dalit founder, political spoof and India’s hunger for humour

Many of us remember popular, non-aligned political movements of angry young people not only from newspapers and history books but also from personal experiences. Recently, following the Israeli strikes on Gaza, universities across the West -- notwithstanding threats of exile and jail from organisations like ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), targeting by the insidious and mysterious Canary Mission in the US, and brutal police thrashing elsewhere -- erupted in outrage at what many considered the cruelty of man against man. It has been a long tradition of student and youth politics, especially after World War II, to do so, thanks to the protections offered by democratic societies.

In India, the 1970s saw mass mobilisation of students and others that shook the foundations of what is often called India’s Grand Old Party, the Congress. In his 2018 book titled The University as a Site of Resistance (2018), Gaurav J. Pathania writes, “The history of global student activism shows that the University (as a democratic institution) has been fighting for its existence and autonomy while challenging existing traditions in the form of knowledge-production.” At various moments in the world, in the late 1960s and later, young people and progressives, upset with the rot in the bureaucratised politics of their countries, hit the streets calling for change and, in some places, eventually led movements that rang out the old system. The sway of public anger, especially among the young who refused to take things lying down, made its impact all over the world, resulting in the fall and rise of governments.

In the cities of India, India Against Corruption (IAC), which in late 2012 acquired a political form in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), reset, at least briefly, the status quo of Delhi politics by championing political entrepreneurship and lowering entry barriers for people aspiring to become part of the political decision-making process. The anti-corruption movement acted as a force multiplier in a country looking for change in the early years of the past decade.

Which means hope often acquires a new meaning in politics when the young crave change and hit the streets vigorously, protesting to usher in a break from the old order.

But do we see traits of such movements in the new entity on the block, an online version of earlier ones, the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), which is all the rage now?

A section of the foreign media sees this political organisation, launched by Boston-based Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old millennial student at Boston University, as a challenger to established parties in the country. Dipke, who makes no secret of his Dalit identity, started it “as a joke”, in his own admission, following controversial comments reportedly made by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, who sought to liken unemployed young people in India to cockroaches and parasites. The CJI later said it was not a comment directed at the entire youth population.

The joke somehow became India’s biggest viral political movement with the cockroach emerging as the superstar mascot.

Clearly, political leaders are upset with CJP getting attention from all quarters, especially given how it has reached millions on social media, especially Instagram, a turf where Gen Z is known not only to congregate but also to shape opinions. Their worries are not unfounded. After all, India is home to an estimated 377 million Gen Z individuals, the largest such population in the world. This demographic, born between 1997 and 2012, accounts for roughly 26 to 28% of the country’s total population and is rated a key driver of the consumer economy. In addition, Gen Z voters, who make up close to a quarter of India’s vote base, have the potential to redefine political engagement, as evident from recent elections in Tamil Nadu where an outsider in the state’s bipolar politics, actor Vijay, cruised to victory. As of 2 pm IST on May 28, CJP has 22.6 million followers on Instagram.

Besides politicians, several analysts are not enthused by the rise of CJP, arguing that its members are largely apolitical and unfamiliar with the methods of mobilisation on the ground, not to speak of the administrative experience required for running the most populous country in the world.

Without doubt, political leaders in general have reasons to be anxious about what happened next door in Nepal, where a youth-led government came to power in March this year following the mass protests of last September that toppled the incumbent administration. Engineer-rapper Balendra Shah, 35, assumed power as Prime Minister after the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) secured a resounding victory in the general election. Incidentally, in neighbouring Bangladesh too, it was Gen Z and the youth who swayed polls this year, thanks to their “Monsoon Revolution” of 2024 that threw out Sheikh Hasina.

Now, notwithstanding the aversion to political parties that appear apolitical, observers, however, see sense in celebrating dissent, even if only for the sake of dissent. In fact, if one looks closely, some of the leaders such movements catapult into the national scheme of things are not as apolitical as they collectively appear while merely opposing corruption.

I remember speaking to Tanuja Pandey, who turned 25 on September 15 last year and was among the prominent Gen Z names who helped topple Nepal’s government through an anti-corruption campaign. Pandey is a climate justice organiser and lawyer. I also spoke with award-winning journalist Namrata Sharma of the Center for Investigative Journalism, Nepal, to find some answers about the rise of this political frustration and its eventual outcome.

She says: “The Gen Z did not start as a movement. It was not an organised movement. There were actually Gen Zs and other youth who had been continuously voicing their frustration with rising corruption, where top-level political leaders and established political parties were accused of involvement. They were also frustrated with the rising costs of simple living, together with fewer opportunities within the country for proper education and livelihoods. On September 8, 2025, too, they did not come out on the streets as an organised institutional group. Most of them did not know each other personally. Their organisational capacity was limited to social-media posts. After the killings of students, many noted Gen Z individuals started communicating more through different social media platforms. But even now, they are not registered as one organisation. Several Gen Z groups are now functioning as protest groups.”

She emphasised that Gen Z in Nepal is not a party. “CJP in India seems to be registered. I see similarities in the sense that both are youth-led and have started expressing resentment towards established political systems. As CJP is registered, they could go the same way political parties go in forming an organisation, creating hierarchy, etc. Gen Z in Nepal was completely unorganised. Later, some of the active Gen Zs joined the established Rastriya Swatantra Party and contested elections and won. Many very active Gen Z leaders are still unorganised and continue to raise their voices against the current government whenever they feel the new government is not addressing the issues raised by the Gen Z movement.”

Now, AAP, which emerged from an effervescent anti-corruption movement into which several other political entities later infiltrated, surprisingly ended up being insensitive to issues of communal polarisation, even riots, and instead sought to warm up to Delhi’s middle classes by pandering almost exclusively to anti-corruption sentiment. Apart from being an anti-BJP, anti-Congress entity, it often refused to raise slogans of inclusivity and, in states like Punjab, highlighted that the maturing of a political party does not happen overnight but is instead a multi-stage process that typically spans decades. Meanwhile, Delhi-based journalist Charmy Harikrishnan, who has closely followed AAP and Gen Z trends, says that CJP looks like AAP Lite, an AAP for Instagram.

But then the key difference between Dipke and several others like AAP founders is his Dalit credentials. “I am a Dalit myself. I hope that will answer all your questions,” he said on X in response to queries on his party’s position on reservations and other social issues. That is something that could endear him to a large section of people, young and old, especially at a time when Dalit assertion appears to be gathering momentum.

In the midst of shrill comments online and offline, political scientist Sumantra Bose offers a contrarian view.

He avers that there is a great need -- and much fodder -- for political satire in India today. “Ours is a country in which politicians and other establishment figures are notoriously devoid of anything remotely resembling a sense of humour, let alone self-deprecating wit.” Therefore, he says, “The CJP spoof is a welcome response to the puffed-up self-importance -- and complete lack of self-reflection -- of those who believe they are our leaders and moral guides. That especially applies in this case to the thin-skinned eminences who sanctimoniously lecture the rest of us daily from the pulpit of ‘justice’.”

Professor Bose adds, “My hope is that the CJP spoof may lead to something lasting that sends up and shows up our assortment of leaders and eminences for what they really are. I am currently in London and would suggest to the CJP spoof creators, as a model, the popular Private Eye magazine, whose political satire has been regaling the British public for decades.”

Well, despite scepticism from some quarters, others see scope for cheer. The cockroach is not a bad mascot either, although many people find it repulsive. It is one of nature’s greatest survivors, having endured for roughly 300 million years by adapting to enormous environmental changes thanks to exceptional resilience.