The People’s Republic of Cockroachia

On the triumphant student movement in India

A quick victory in India. What a joyous weekend. The bubble of invincibility has burst. A rebellion led by unemployed graduates and students, including many who once voted for the BJP, has humbled an arrogant government, corrupt to its core.

One can never predict what might trigger a nationwide mass protest or, better still, an uprising. India’s Chief Justice, Surya Kant, presumably anticipated few repercussions when he described unemployed students as parasites while upbraiding a lawyer in court:

There are already parasites of society who attack the system and you want to join hands with them? There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment and don’t have any place in profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, some of them become RTI activists, some of them become other activists, and they start attacking everyone…and you people file contempt petitions!

Embracing his status, Abhijeet Dipke, a Boston-based Indian student, launched a satirical call for the cockroach class to unite and form an on-line party. Millions heeded the call and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) became a very real political force. Within the space of a week, a student movement that began in Delhi had spread to Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Bihar and West Bengal. Over 100,000 took over the streets just in Kolkata, a province in which the BJP had won a victory for the first time only a few months ago. Electoralism trumped by mass anger on the streets. With his off-hand remark, the unlucky Kant set off a wave of protests that the Modi government can neither contain nor crush. This outrage was not triggered by Kant’s remarks alone. It was the breaking point for millions of students who refuse to put up with India’s corrupt education system any longer. As Arundhati Roy outlined recently in a sharp contextualising text published in The Wire, the country’s fearless on-line weekly:

[The CJP’s] first demand was the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the education minister who sits smugly atop a corrupt, rotten ministry under which public exam papers are regularly leaked. An estimated 152 since 2014, according to opposition parties. These leaks have devastated the lives of millions of young people who spent years preparing for these exams, some of whose parents have had to sell their land or homes to support their children’s studies and pay the fee for the right to appear for these exams. A novel form of legal extortion. After the recent leak of the exam paper for medical college admissions, 12 distressed students died by suicide.

On Saturday, Pradhan was forced to resign, giving the CJP their first victory. The government accepted all the demands of this 2-month-old movement on Sunday. The triumph of Cockroachia marks a significant step forward for the beleaguered youth of India.

The name of the new party is a mixture of satire, anger and growing hatred towards a government that promised much to the ‘majority’ community and delivered little except a regular diet of Islamophobia, repression and the open worship of billionaires and millionaires. The centre and left parties (Congress and the two Communist Parties) could not build an opposition. What they found difficult, the protesting students have made look easy (though it isn’t). I’ve always argued that the dangerous moment for any regime – democratic or authoritarian – comes when the people they are oppressing decide they are prepared to sacrifice their lives to resist. The young student who bared his chest to the police and said: ‘Sir if you want to kill me, go ahead. I’m no longer scared.’ He was beaten up but his life was not threatened. It is this aspect of the movement that worries the establishment.

This is the first time since India became independent in August 1947 that students have marched in such huge numbers throughout the country. Many of them come from the middle classes, the urban petit-bourgeois that has voted for Modi’s BJP and kept it in power for twelve years. The failures of the opposition has put these students at the centre of a struggle against a bigoted and corrupt government. When Dipke flew back to Delhi from Boston he spoke courageously and said to those attending the rallies (and watching online) that if they had been led by Muslims or adivasis their leaders would have either been in prison or shot dead. A promising sign that the CJP may provide a counter-position to the rampant and divisive Islamophobia that Modi has been deploying for years.

India’s new cockroach movement is only the latest instance of student movements that have emerged to topple long-standing authoritarian governments in South Asia. The students who toppled the repressive regime of Sheikha Hasina in Bangladesh three years ago were brave but had no politics worth the name. They agreed to the military-supported appointment of Muhammed Younus, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a dubious banker who attempted to ‘humanise’ neoliberalism. Repression of Awami Leaguers who were toppled is not too different from that once carried out by the Awami League. It’s a mess.

Looking further back, a particularly dramatic student uprising erupted in Pakistan at the beginning of November 1968. By March 1969, it had toppled the military dictator Field-Marshal Ayub Khan. Like the cockroach movement in India today, the protests in Pakistan were triggered by a seemingly minor episode in Rawalpindi. The dictatorship had been celebrating its 10^th anniversary in the most extravagant fashion when a small group of students from Gordon College were returning from shopping in the tribal area black market. On their return, the students were arrested and charged by corrupt police looking to line their own pockets. The episode was viewed as the last straw. Gordon College students led by Raja Anwar demanded the release of those who were locked up. More clashes followed. Within a fortnight, the whole of Rawalpindi was on the streets. The revolt spread to Lahore, Karachi, Dhaka, Chittagong and towns big and small. Wage workers, civil servants, sex workers, and lawyers alike joined the movement. Young officers refused to open fire on protesters. The dictator resigned. Free elections were held in which the East Pakistan (pre-Bangladesh) Awami League won an overall majority. The military refused to recognise the results and invaded their own province and a fierce civil war ensued. Indira Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister at the time, intervened militarily and the Pakistan Army suffered a huge defeat. A nation was born as the result of a student uprising.

Could the same happen in India? Modi has caved in to the students’ demands to prevent his own support from eroding further, but the Cockroaches should not harbour any illusions. They should set up Cockroach Councils in every city where this is possible to monitor the progress and report back every Sunday to supporters’ assemblies. Mass anger can dissipate quickly; this should not be allowed to happen in India. The opposition parties should learn a few lessons from the unemployed graduates who have inflicted the first real defeat on this government. Indian politics, submerged for far too long in the BJP darkness, is beginning to change again. For this we thank Chief Justice Kant.