New Delhi, India – Abhijeet Dipke has barely slept in the last 72 hours, fielding waves of messages on social media after a casual joke took an unexpected turn.
The 30-year-old, a recent graduate in public relations from Boston University in the United States, finds himself leading a sweeping satirical political movement – the so-called Cockroach Janta Party (“janta” is people in Hindi) – being joined online by thousands of people with each passing day.
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On Friday, India’s chief justice of the Supreme Court, Surya Kant, said during an open court hearing that “parasites” were attacking the system, and equated the youngsters to cockroaches “who don’t get any employment and don’t have any place in a profession”.
“There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists, and they start attacking everyone,” he said.
Kant later clarified his remarks, saying his comment related to some people acquiring fraudulent degrees, and did not target India’s youth, whom he called “the pillars of a developed India”.
Yet, his remarks drew considerable ire, mainly from Gen Z internet users as they battle large-scale unemployment, inflation, and bitter religious divides after 12 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.
As outrage escalated across social media, Dipke posted on X on Saturday: “What if all cockroaches come together?”
