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Gen Z protesters demanding the resignation of India’s education minister over alleged irregularities in the country’s competitive examinations have turned memes, viral videos and pop culture references into weapons of dissent.
Social media has becoming an extension of demonstrations taking place on the streets of Delhi and other cities.
The protests are being spearheaded by the Cockroach Janta Party, a movement that began as a satirical response to a remark by India’s chief justice before growing into a campaign over repeated examination paper leaks.
The CJP has been staging a sit-in at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar for more than a month, demanding the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and wider reforms to India’s examination system.
On 20 July, protesters trying to march to India’s parliament march were stopped by police with a baton charge and teargas.
CJP’s origin as an online movement has shaped the protests, with demonstrators turning their encounters with police into Subway Surfers-style videos and posting “Get Ready with Me” reels featuring outfits to protect them from getting “beaten by cops”.
Every video of a police chase came with its own soundtrack. Some were set to “Chak De India”, the rousing anthem from Shah Rukh Khan’s 2007 film about an underdog women’s hockey team, while others borrowed “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”, inspired by the biopic of the Indian sprinting legend Milkha Singh.
Yet others chose the irreverent and chaotic “Bhaag DK Bose” from the cult comedy Delhi Belly, each “bhaag” – run in Hindi – in the chorus landing a little too perfectly as protesters sprinted away from police baton-charges.
For some, the march doubled as a fitness tracker as they posted Strava screenshots of the distances they had run while fleeing police while others jokingly thanked police for the unexpected “cardio”.
Protestors dressed as Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, and Iron Man all made appearances, joined by Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the independence movement, and BR Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian constitution, as if they had returned for the “latest season” of Indian politics.
A man in a Guy Fawkes mask carried a placard reading, “Ab ki baar, antim sanskaar” (This time, the final rites”), a dark twist on prime minister Narendra Modi’s long-running campaign slogan, “Ab ki Baar Modi Sarkar (This time, a Modi government)”.
Placards became punchlines in their own right, with one borrowing from Mr Modi’s flagship manufacturing campaign, declaring: “We asked for ‘Make in India’, you gave us ‘Leak in India’.”
Another simply read: “Bro is still employed”, alongside a photograph of the education minister.
Others lamented: “Even my ex hadn’t ignored me this much”, “Ikea has better cabinets”, and “Nobody funds me, I hate this government for free”.
If there was one cultural touchstone protesters returned to again and again, it was Bollywood.
Protesters commandeered the 2023 hit Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar (You're a liar, I'm a trickster), swapping its flirtatious leads for Mr Modi and Mr Pradhan and turning its lovesick soundtrack into political satire.
A lyric that originally lamented an inattentive lover – “Kehne ko toh hai mera, lekin meri sunta nahi” (They may be mine but they never listen to me) – turned into a complaint about ministers accused of turning a deaf ear to students.
The protests even acquired their own K-pop fancams, of sorts, as editors swapped out shots of K-pop idols for clips of CJP leader Abhijeet Dipke being slapped at rallies, students ducking police batons, and protesters charging through crowds, setting them to “Baepsae”, BTS's biting critique of a system stacked against younger generations, and “Hooligan”, whose rule-breaking energy transformed confrontations into edits which looked as though they had been lifted straight from the ARMY Instagram.
As police launched teargas canisters, protesters had already turned them into punchlines. One joked that the Delhi police should stop using them because they were only making the national capital’s notorious pollution worse and would soon have everyone demanding the environment minister’s resignation too.
Another declared the gas “100 per cent authentic and without adulteration”, a pointed dig at India’s controversial ethanol-blended petrol.
When a protester calmly flung a smoking shell back in the direction it had come from, the internet reached the only possible verdict: it had just witnessed a real-life Uno reverse card.
Even Etsy witches got involved, with a spellcaster performing a hex on Mr Modi, Mr Pradhan, home minister Amit Shah, transport minister Nitin Gadkari, and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath, proving that no form of resistance was too niche.
If Gen Z has a content format, someone at Jantar Mantar has used it. There were “fit checks” featuring anti-tear gas goggles, “Outfit of the Day” reels filmed on the march and couples’ challenge videos where the answer to “Who's more protective?” was, inevitably, police personnel standing behind them.
By the time one protester suggested the demonstrations were the ideal place to find a boyfriend or girlfriend, it felt as though the movement had colonised every corner of Indian social media.
Behind the memes, however, the demands of the protesters remained unchanged. On Thursday, Mr Modi announced in his first public response to the protests that fast-track courts would be set up to prosecute anyone found responsible for exam paper leaks but stopped short of taking action against Mr Pradhan.
The CJP dismissed the announcement as insufficient, saying it would continue its sit-in at Jantar Mantar until Mr Pradhan resigned and wider reforms to the examination system were introduced.
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