The calculus of conventional political analysis doesn’t get it. For it asks clever, pointless questions: Whodunnit? What’s the motive? What’s the next move? Its attempt at weighing a shadow reveals nothing but its own fantasies. Or nightmares. This is where political minds could learn something from a poet or a psychologist.
Most reactions to the Cockroach Janta Party miss a simple truth in plain sight. The CJP is not a party. It is no more and no less than the public. It is not a community. Not even a crowd. It is a stack of emotions. It is nowhere close to a movement. It is just a moment.
And that is why it matters. That is why it must not be dismissed. It is a moment that offers us a glimpse. A rare glimpse of an energy that can reclaim the republic from authoritarian assault. Provided we recognise that this is not a wave, but an undercurrent. Provided we can resist the foolish temptation to capture it. Or the stubborn reflex to stand in its way.
At first sight, it fits in with a pattern of midlife crisis of governments with massive mandates, when protest movements came up from nowhere to expose the underbelly of power. The Gujarat and Bihar movements in 1973-74, Assam movement in 1983, Anna movement in 2012 and Kisan Morcha in 2021 — all successfully challenged seemingly invincible governments, bypassing a lacklustre Opposition.
The Narendra Modi government is poised at a similar stage. While the BJP scraped back into power in 2024, it did not retain the kind of dominance or legitimacy that it enjoyed for a decade. Over the past two years, culminating in the successful conquest of Bengal, the BJP government has regained dominance, even if its legitimacy remains fractured. It is no coincidence that the CJP erupted just when the ruling party’s stranglehold over electoral contestations appeared near total. The NEET cancellation and the CJI’s remarks were the occasion, not the cause.
Yet this moment is much more and much less than the other historical parallels. For starters, it is not a real expression of political energy on the ground. It is one thing to generate synchronised outrage on social media, quite another to convert that into a movement that has feet on the ground, or take it towards a viable political alternative.
The incipient CJP is nowhere there. It has a founder, not necessarily a leader. A vast number of its followers could just be spectators or curious neophytes with little stomach for real-life political action. A large majority could be expressing diverse, unrelated or even contradictory grievances against an unspecified adversary. As per Ernesto Laclau, this is a defining feature of every such popular protest. This is the raw energy powerful movements are built from.
What makes the CJP more special is the context of growing authoritarianism and its choice of “dilemma action” to take it on. Turning the cockroach into a meme to take on the system is a textbook example of what the Serbian thinker-activist Srđa Popović has been arguing, that humour and unpredictable play is the key to non-violent resistance to authoritarian regimes. Pranksters vs. Autocrats (Cornell University Press, 2020) by Popović and Sophia A McClennen spells out why such pranks succeed where regular opposition does not. Such protests put authoritarian rulers in a dilemma: If they permit it, they appear weak; if they suppress it, they appear cruel and absurd. Perhaps unwittingly, the CJP offers a model of dilemma action that democratic resistance could learn from.
More than a method of protest, this moment teaches us to take a clear-eyed view of the political reality of contemporary India. First, no amount of drum-beating around electoral success can hide the growing popular disquiet and distress, especially among the youth. Second, if an all-powerful regime has to invoke national security to ban a meme and deploy its troll army to discredit a social-media trend, it must be very weak within. The greater its conquests, the more vulnerable it is. Third, the parliamentary opposition is not quite up to the task. The 23 million or so followers of CJP have a message for all opposition parties: You need to get your act together.
Therefore we must find a new way to react to the Cockroach Janta Party, away from the usual political cynicism, strategic distancing or tactical embrace. Vinod Kumar Shukla’s best-known poem invites us to evolve a new grammar of political solidarity to counter a widespread despair: “Mujhe vah nahin jaanta tha/mere haath badhaane ko jaanta tha … dono ek doosare ko nahin jaante the/saath chalne ko jaante the (He did not know me/ But knew my extended hand … We did not know each other/But knew the walking together)”. This is not the camaraderie of revolutionaries, but a companionship of strangers. Not a bond born out of shared identity but one based on shared vulnerability.
These young persons may not know us. Yet they might recognise our extended hand. We may not know each other. But we might learn to walk together in these dark times.
The writer is member, Swaraj India, and national convenor, Bharat Jodo Abhiyaan. Views are personal
