Mumbai
India’s “Cockroach Party” started out in May as a Gen-Z internet joke that went viral. In July, it forced the government into its biggest climbdown in years.
Now the “Cockroaches” are back for what they’re billing as Season 2 of their political movement.
This time their target is the 62-year-old chief of the Election Commission that holds the keys to their democracy – the world’s largest – and who, they allege, is responsible for disenfranchising tens of millions of their fellow citizens.
The Cockroach Janta Party takes its name from an off-the-cuff remark by India’s chief justice, who in May allegedly used the words “cockroaches” and “parasites” to refer to groups of unemployed youth in the country. He later claimed he was misquoted, but CJP founder and Boston University graduate Abhijeet Dipke ran with it, hailing the insect’s stubbornness and indestructibility.
The movement then joined nationwide protests demanding the removal of the education minister over an exam paper leaks scandal, harnessing widespread anger at the lack of opportunities for young people and sparking moments that captured India’s internet.
Harrowing police chases became viral comedy. Reels captured everything from dancing and DJ parties at protest sites and songs mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Other clips played on FOMO and nudged friends to get off their phones and join the protests.
And there was free food. So much free food that organizers eventually had to ask supporters across the country to stop sending it.
Then, after weeks of sit-ins and marches, Dharmendra Pradhan, the education minister, stepped down, a rare blow to Modi’s government, and one that more established opposition parties have been unable to land.
The target of Saturday’s protests is Gyanesh Kumar, the head of the Electoral Commission that’s currently in the middle of a gargantuan exercise to remove dead, duplicate and otherwise ineligible voters from the voter lists. Opposition parties say the commission is stripping out eligible voters to benefit Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, claims the BJP and the commission deny.
CNN has reached out to the election commission and BJP for a response.
More mainstream political parties are calling for the same thing, but now Dipke is calling supporters of the CJP back to Jantar Mantar, the historic protest ground in the center of the capital New Delhi, for “Season 2.”
Organizers hope tens of thousands will come out.
The CJP said police in several states were detaining thousands of its supporters as they headed for Saturday’s protest. The government ordered mobile internet services to be temporarily suspended within a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) radius of central Delhi’s prominent Janpath Kartavya Path crossing.
Reuters on Saturday reported central Delhi was sealed with thousands of police and paramilitaries.
The news agency also reported that some long-distance trains to Delhi were canceled on Friday and more than 50 metro stations shut.
Amnesty International issued a statement Friday saying Delhi police “must facilitate the right to peaceful protest amid lockdown-like restrictions.”
Muskaan, 19, a video editor based in Delhi and veteran of the first round of CJP demonstrations, is weighing whether to go again, she told CNN.
Attending the first round of “Cockroach” protests, she had been expecting the police violence she had seen on television, she said, asking only to use her first name. She’d only gone because her friends had, she said.
“But when we went there, there was a lot of fun… People were playing songs, dancing, and really good memes on banners.”
Once she was there, she learned much more about the exam leaks and how they had affected people’s lives.
Muskaan says she was pleased when Pradhan resigned, but also disappointed that the protests ended so quickly. “I felt that it was too soon, that we should have got another chance to go again,” she said.
Chief Election Commissioner Kumar is a very different target.
Removing him would require a formal parliamentary process and a special majority in both houses. The opposition doesn’t have the numbers.
That leaves the CJP facing a different test. Its first campaign showed that an online joke could become a street movement and generate political pressure. Season 2 is asking whether that formula can work on a much bigger issue: India’s gargantuan electoral system.
For a movement born from memes, the protests beginning on Saturday in the capital will test whether that irreverent energy can translate into pressure on an institution at the heart of India’s democracy.
