From "This Indian youth party started as satire. Then it got serious. The movement's growth reflects the depth of frustration of a generation that feels unseen and unheard" (WaPo)(gift link).
This gets the old "insect politics" tag.
May 28, 2026
"Why are millions of young Indians suddenly calling themselves cockroaches?"
"The chief justice of the Supreme Court of India probably did not anticipate that an off-the-cuff courtroom remark would trigger one of the most popular political satire movements his country has seen. At a May 15 hearing on judicial appointments, Justice Surya Kant made a comment about youngsters 'like cockroaches,' who, unable to find employment or establish themselves professionally, drift into media, social media and political activism.... Many viewed the remark as dehumanizing. Lawyers debated proper judicial conduct while young Indians flooded social media with angry responses and memes. Then a 30-year-old Boston University graduate named Abhijeet Dipke launched a satirical Instagram page called the 'Cockroach Janta Party' — a play on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party...."
From "This Indian youth party started as satire. Then it got serious. The movement's growth reflects the depth of frustration of a generation that feels unseen and unheard" (WaPo)(gift link).
From "This Indian youth party started as satire. Then it got serious. The movement's growth reflects the depth of frustration of a generation that feels unseen and unheard" (WaPo)(gift link).
Posts
26 comments:
Judge Kant should have gone with the more Hitlerian "vermin."
Good old Gulliver's Travels: Gulliver reports on some comments by the King of the Giants, roughly 72 feet tall to Gulliver's 6 feet:
Then turning to his first Minister, ... he observed, how contemptible a Thing was human Grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive Insects as I; And yet, said he, I dare engage, these Creatures have their Titles and Distinctions of Honour; they contrive little Nests and Burrows, that they call Houses and Cities; they make a Figure in Dress and Equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray. And thus he continued on, while my Colour came and went several Times....
I can't tell if owning the moniker increases their Izzat or decreases it, but it's creative and sufficiently Jugaad that I'm going with increases it.
Way to go Abhijeet. Collect one million Izzat.
Cockroaches = Deplorables.
See if it has the same effect.
This is a good sign.Youth protesting, but without destruction, is the essence of democratic process and balancing the course.
Cockroach is a good symbol, it keeps going and going, but I am not sure that surviving death is the right motif.
Trump, Bibi, Biden, Merz, ..., so many others in the leadership are survivalist cockroaches. Modi does need to turn focus now on manufacturing jobs, and far better education and health than these young folks face.
The average age in India is 29, as opposed to Europe at mid 40s, I’d have thought that hacking off young voters was a poor move. Hopefully the younger voters will teach that lesson to the political elite.
Poor kid, but he's gonna have to learn this unpleasant fact some time. This what the people in power think about the people they rule over.
Would it be accurate to guess that it was a woman that said it and that she was mad that young low class men were not working shit jobs for low wages happily to support the worthless high income job she had?
This is what college does to people. Even in India.
The 'like cockroaches' is telling because depending on the jāti of the parties involved, that is precisely what someone of a higher caste would think of a lower. This is what enrages me most about the West's neverending oppression olympics. 90% of the world's people exist in an ever present and more severely imperious racism, classism, and clannism than anything you can find in the historically-European countries hosting these farces.
You want to see oppression? Go just about anywhere else.
So, what are insect politics? Do ants use positive voter ID?
Once upon a time..., those who were "unable to find employment or establish themselves professionally...," either starved, or threw themselves upon the mercy of the local parish, or Salvation Army outpost, or other charity enterprise.
...because those who did not work, who did not produce something of value to others, who contributed nothing to the "commonweal," did not eat except through the charity of others.
"Many viewed the remark as dehumanizing." What is more "dehumanizing" than those who live as described herein?
Personally, I'd prefer "parasitic" over "cockroach," as being more descriptive of their status as free-riders on the productive elements of our society.
Maybe that sounds too harsh? YMMV :- )
“Poor kid, but he's gonna have to learn this unpleasant fact some time.”
They are going to love Kafka
We began referring to ourselves as "deplorables" after Hillary-the-POS-Extraordinaire called us that.
"Justice Surya Kant made a comment about youngsters 'like cockroaches,' who, unable to find employment or establish themselves professionally, drift into media, social media and political activism...."
Are they funded/supported by NGOs, whether from US sources or transnational sources? Cockroaches gotta eat...
Maybe they're guttersnipes.
Would it be accurate to guess that it was a woman that said it
No. There are 32 justices on India's Supreme Court and one is a woman. She is not the chief justice. The justice who made the remark is a member of one of the higher castes. The CJP founder is not.
*********
The guy who started the CJP lives in America. I'd like to know the history of the Cockroach Janta Party's X account. It says it joined X in 2022 and has had 53 username changes. It also says it's based in India which seems weird since the guy running it is not in India. He's also claiming that their Instagram account has been hacked and that calls for protests on X were because his account was hacked.
Abhijeet Dipke, the founder, has an X account based in the US, so I supposed he could have someone in India running the other account. The founder used to do social media for the Aam Aadmi Party so people are accusing it of being a covert branch of that party.
Sounds like a variation on the Streisand effect
Are there any non-genocidal systems more evil than the Indian caste system?
“Would it be accurate to guess that it was a woman that said it and that she was mad that young low class men were not working shit jobs for low wages happily to support the worthless high income job she had?”
Per usual, inaccurate.
Justice Surya Kant is a male judge of the Supreme Court of India.
Caste based Reservations system crippled India growth and will remain so for decades to come
IEE, isn’t it similar to DEI in the US except that it’s written into the Indian constitution since the 1950s rather than whatever DEI is in the US.
So this is interesting:
When Justice Surya Kant was thought to be a woman the comment was:
“Would it be accurate to guess that it was a woman that said it and that she was mad that young low class men were not working shit jobs for low wages happily to support the worthless high income job she had?”
When Justice Surya Kant turned out to be a man the comment was:
“Are there any non-genocidal systems more evil than the Indian caste system?”
Women are judged at the individual level (her motives, her job, her character). Men are judged at the structural level (the system that produced him). Women get the ad hominem, men get the sociology.
In other words it’s a reaction to the sex of who is talking. When it’s a woman, the instinct is to cut her down.
When it’s a man, the instinct is to indict the system around him.
Women are judged as women, men are judged as people.
This is what Simone de Beauvoir argued in The Second Sex: man is treated as the universal, the subject, the “One,” while woman is the particular, the deviation, the “Other.” Men get to be people who happen to have views. Women are women first, and their views are filtered through that.
A generation that feels unseen and unheard. How novel.
Eva, or you could say professional women are their own caste. CC, JSM
I guess my point is this: this was such a beautiful example of a person who made a very personal, condescending attack when he thought the judge was a woman, and a much broader, unemotional assessment when he found out the judge was a man.
As to making generalities about any group - sorry, I’m just not interested.
And BTW, I quoted Simone de Beauvoir not because I agree with her observation as a general description of all men, but because it was such a good description of the thought process in this one instance.
The "cockroach" remark was insulting, but the speaker did capture something about young people who gravitate towards politics and the media. My sense, though, is that they aren't aimless, but perhaps too driven.
India is said to be a very verbal, very political, legalistic and argumentative culture -- not so different in that respect from the US, but very different from contemporary China or Japan.
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