New Delhi, India – Tens of thousands of protesters, most of them students, are expected to march to India’s Parliament from a protest site in the heart of the national capital to demand the resignations of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his education minister.
For nearly a month, supporters of the viral “cockroach” movement have occupied New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar area, India’s most popular protest site, located a couple of kilometres from parliament, after back-to-back scandals related to examination paper leaks, technical glitches and cancelled tests triggered outrage in the world’s most populous country.
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On Saturday, dozens of police officers forcibly removed activist Sonam Wangchuk from the protest site, 20 days after the 59-year-old Gandhian began a hunger strike in solidarity with the cockroach movement.
Police cited a court order and Wangchuk’s “deteriorating health condition” to defend their move. But Wangchuk’s wife, Gitanjali J Angmo, said her husband was taken to hospital against his will and accused the government of “illegal detention” disguised as medical care.
Angered over Wangchuk’s removal, Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), has now demanded Modi’s resignation and urged his supporters to march to parliament on Monday, the first day of its monsoon session.
As thousands have responded to Dipke’s call, New Delhi is on edge amid a heavy deployment of police and paramilitary forces. Other activist groups and political parties have expressed their solidarity with the march and asked people to join.
Here is everything you need to know about the Gen Z-led protest and how things reached this point:
What is the cockroach movement?
It is made up primarily of young Indians who identify themselves as “cockroaches”, casting themselves as survivors of what they see as a “decaying” political system under Modi’s government.
They have organised under the CJP, a satirical “people’s party” born out of a joke after India’s top judge casually likened government critics and unemployed youth to “cockroaches” and “parasites”.
The comment sparked a furore, prompting Dipke, a former Boston University student, to ask on X: “What if all cockroaches came together?” The joke hit a nerve. Within days, Dipke set up a website asking people to sign in as his Instagram handle amassed millions of followers.
Last month, Dipke landed in New Delhi from the United States, aiming to harness a viral internet moment into an on-the-ground movement. The movement started with a single demand: the sacking of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who it accused of inaction over frequent exam paper leaks, which have led to the deaths by suicide of dozens of students in the past decade.
South Asia has emerged in recent years as ground zero of Gen Z protests with India’s neighbouring Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal seeing mass protests and the toppling of unpopular governments. India has the world’s largest Gen Z cohort, which has been facing unemployment, record-high inequality and religious tensions since 2014, coupled with the country’s slide in multiple democratic indices.
What is happening at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar?
The CJP movement is calling for sweeping reforms to India’s competitive examination system and compensation for the families of students who died by suicide over the leaks and the exam results.
But Pradhan has refused to step down and even called the protesters the “B team of terrorists”. Modi, who has not held a news conference in more than 12 years but is active on social media, has not reacted to the protests yet.
Meanwhile, Wangchuk, an acclaimed engineer-turned-educator from the northern region of Ladakh, continued a hunger strike he started on June 28. He held a similar strike in September, demanding special status for Ladakh, a Himalayan region that Modi’s government split off from India-administered Kashmir in 2019.
Three doctoral students – Neha Bora, Aameen Amitoj and Manish – joined Wangchuk on the indefinite hunger strike. They are members of the All India Students Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).
On Saturday, police entered the protest site in civilian dress, stormed the stage and covered it with white curtains to whisk away Wangchuk. Images of the operation went viral on social media, prompting anger and further fuelling the protest movement.
As the police whisked away a frail Wangchuk from the sit-in stage, they also broke into the tents of the AISA students before the protesters pushed them out.
The Delhi police, who are controlled by the federal government, have repeatedly asked the protesters to vacate the site.
Why are protesters marching to parliament?
On July 8, Wangchuk announced plans to march to the parliament to demand the resignation of Pradhan.
“If you really want to help, then do a little more than messages from comfy couches; then come to Delhi on 20th July,” he wrote in an appeal on X, later calling the protest “India’s second freedom movement”.
The choice of the date was deliberate.
Parliament is meeting for its monsoon session, one of the three annual legislative sessions it holds, starting on Monday.
“This march is to reclaim our India. It is the fight for a better future, not just for students but for this country as well. People must show up in large numbers and somehow reach the parliament,” Saurav Das, the chief spokesman of the CJP, told Al Jazeera.
“This march will also decide whether we are alive as a nation and society.”
Wangchuk and Dipke have consistently appealed to the protesters to remain peaceful despite provocation by the Hindu nationalist government’s supporters and police.
Dipke has been assaulted at least twice in the past month, slapped during an event in Jaipur city last month and attacked with an ink-like substance on Saturday.
Dipke broke down on Saturday morning and pledged to continue the hunger strike in place of Wangchuk.
“Until now, we were demanding Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, but after this despicable act, we will now demand the resignation of Narendra Modi,” he said.
What are the ‘cockroaches’ demanding?
Jantar Mantar was packed on Saturday evening as thousands of people turned up after the forced removal of Wangchuk.
Shreya Kumar, a Delhi University student, said she was shaken by the way police “cheated the protesters”, she told Al Jazeera at the protest site.
“I came because my blood is boiling. This government has taken everything for a ride. They are liars and cheaters,” said the 19-year-old student, who was joined by her friends.
Das, the CJP spokesman, said Wangchuk is under an “illegal detention and the grounds for such detention have not been furnished to us”.
Angmo has petitioned the court, demanding that her husband be transferred from a government hospital to a private facility of their choice.
“The action against Wangchuk was very dictatorial. It shows that the government does not believe in dialogue, deliberation or discussion – the three tenets of democracy,” Das said.
Kumar, who spent the night at the site, is worried the police might overpower the protesters as they prepare for the march to parliament.
“We are all ready to face the police and the paramilitary,” she said. “We say: Bring it on! But the minister must resign.”
