How a meme page helped force out an Indian government minister

On July 20, thousands of Gen Z protesters from across India gathered in New Delhi for what was intended to be a peaceful march towards Parliament. Within five days, the demonstrations had spread to major cities across the country, culminating in one of the most significant political concessions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 12 years in office: the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The movement grew out of outrage over repeated paper leaks affecting NEET, India’s notoriously competitive medical entrance examination. For thousands of students who spend years preparing – often sitting the exam multiple times – the leaks rendered years of work meaningless, fuelling widespread anger at a system many felt had failed them. Combined with mounting frustration over youth unemployment, that outrage quickly snowballed into one of the country’s largest youth-led demonstrations in recent years. Sonam Wangchuk, the Ladakh-based engineer and activist, had already begun a hunger strike calling for examination reform and Pradhan’s resignation. His 26-day fast intensified public pressure and helped broaden the movement beyond student circles. Less than a week after the march on Parliament, Pradhan resigned.

The protests had achieved what many thought impossible: they had forced a government long seen as politically untouchable to meet some of their demands. For years, India’s Gen Z has been caricatured as a generation of lazy, unserious upstarts who have never known hardship, earning money from the comfort of their phone screens. It is ironic, then, that the movement traces its origins to an Instagram account.

Launched in May by 30-year-old Boston University graduate Abhijeet Dipke, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) had amassed more than 15 million Instagram followers by May 21. It began as a satirical response to remarks by India’s chief justice, Surya Kant, comparing some unemployed young people and activists to “cockroaches” during a court hearing – comments that quickly went viral. The movement’s name is also a play on that of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Though critics initially dismissed CJP as little more than a meme page, it has succeeded in reaching and empowering a generation of young Indians who feel they have repeatedly been written off.

“These protests have firmly cemented Gen Z as a key player in India’s democracy. We’re a generation that needs to be spoken to, not spoken at”

That was why 27-year-old Ria Chopra, author of Never Logged Out: How the Internet Created India’s Gen Z, decided to show up. It was not her first protest: as a child, her parents took her to demonstrations organised by the India Against Corruption movement, instilling in her a belief in physically showing up for the causes she supports. “I wanted to show up and see how an internet meme translated into a mass movement,” says Chopra. “For a lot of people, this was their first protest. I went with a few of my friends who had never attended any other movement. So I think that sense of a collective was very palpable this time.” Rather than adopting the language of traditional activism, Gen Z used memes to express its frustration with the government. “The protest was operating within a framework set by the internet. These protests have firmly cemented Gen Z as a key player in India’s democracy. We’re a generation that needs to be spoken to, not spoken at,” says Chopra.

Ask anyone who attended what they remember most, and they are likely to mention the sense of solidarity among protesters. 27-year-old Krey Kannojia, an MBA student and independent events consultant who has taken part in demonstrations since the anti-CAA protests of 2019, describes a movement sustained as much by care as by anger. Volunteers moved through the crowd checking whether people needed water or medical assistance, while those unable to travel to New Delhi organised food deliveries instead. “The biggest highlight for me was the incredible sense of unity,” they tell Dazed. “People who couldn’t physically come to Jantar Mantar were still sending supplies. The feeling of isolation broke because I realised I wasn’t alone.”

It’s a sentiment that 25-year-old writer Saachi Gupta returns to repeatedly. In an era when “community” increasingly describes ticketed events, networking spaces and carefully curated online audiences, she argues that protests remain one of the few places where people gather without expecting anything in return. “Nobody is paying to be there,” she says. “People show up simply because they believe things can be better.”

That sense of collective belief also explains why the movement looked the way it did. Seasoned commentators, speaking from television studios the following morning, dismissed the humour and memefication of political dissent that had punctuated the demonstrations, treating it as evidence that Gen Z could not take politics seriously. Gupta disagrees. “A protest doesn’t remain only a space for mourning,” she says. “It becomes a place where people can see one another, find comfort in each other and remember they’re not alone.” The inside jokes boldly scrawled across placards demanding accountability from the government also helped protesters find joy in that sense of unity.

“The illusion that nothing changes has now been broken”

If the education minister’s resignation marked the movement’s immediate victory, its longer-term significance may lie elsewhere. For Chopra, the protests represent a generation discovering that political participation can still produce tangible results. “It becomes a watershed moment,” she says. “It teaches people that participating in democracy can actually lead to results.” Kannojia agrees. “The illusion that nothing changes has now been broken.” That optimism, however, comes with caveats. Gupta points out that, once the minister resigned, the broad coalition formed around the protests began to fracture. Long-standing disagreements over caste, reservations and identity politics quickly resurfaced, reminding participants that building solidarity is often harder than building momentum. “We’re never going to achieve what we want if we keep pointing fingers at each other instead of fighting the bigger evil.” Whether that coalition can endure remains uncertain.

What feels less uncertain is that India’s youngest generation has altered the terms of political participation. Nobody abandoned the internet to conform to the sober image of a model child that older generations had imposed on Gen Z. Instead, they translated their digital fluency into collective action. The resignation of one minister will be remembered as the movement’s most visible victory. Its more enduring legacy may be convincing an entire generation that the distance between an Instagram post and political change is far smaller than they had been led to believe.