‘Climate of fear has collapsed’: India’s protest victory signals trouble ahead for Modi

Cockroach Janta party supporters in New Delhi on Saturday. Their core demand, for Dharmendra Pradhan to resign, has been achieved. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters View image in fullscreen Cockroach Janta party supporters in New Delhi on Saturday. Their core demand, for Dharmendra Pradhan to resign, has been achieved. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters Analysis ‘Climate of fear has collapsed’: India’s protest victory signals trouble ahead for Modi Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi Strongman leader’s grip over media channels has been rocked and opposition parties reinvigorated by CJP Even the night before Narendra Modi accepted the resignation of his education minister, India’s prime minister appeared confident that the largest mass uprising to take place in his 12 years in power would do little to rattle his government. Addressing his “young friends,” in a late-night Instagram selfie reel on Friday, he thanked the people – who were mobilised en masse across the country , shouting anti-government slogans – for their “thoughtful suggestions”. Less than 24 hours later, Modi – who has fiercely cultivated his strongman image for years – had accepted Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation . It was, say analysts, the remarkable humbling of a government that has proved itself unwilling to bow in the face of any public pressure and which has ruled with almost untouchable impunity since 2014. Over that past week, a gen Z movement that called itself the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) mobilised an unprecedented protest movement in the name of justice for millions of young people when the leaking of a crucial exam paper forced 2 million students to resit the test and was blamed for more than a dozen suicides. 0:51 'Cockroach' movement: thousands march in anti-government protest in New Delhi The resignation of Pradhan, Modi’s loyal political ally, remained their first and foremost demand for accountability, even as the protests expanded into a wider fight for democracy. Yet Pradhan went unmentioned by Modi in his Instagram address. On Saturday morning, more people than ever were pouring into the protest site in Delhi’s historic Jantar Mantar site – the centre of the protests – and unrest was spreading fast to other cities, including states ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). But it was not only physical space that had been captured by the cockroach movement. Since they came to power, the BJP has proved enormously effective at capturing the online narrative, deploying their powerful, highly organised IT cell to mobilise and attack any perceived criticism of the government, whether it came from citizens, politicians or journalists. But they proved no match for the millions of gen Z memes and reels that began to flood Instagram over this past week, fearlessly insulting Modi and pillorying the government, each more creative and incendiary than the next. Modi’s last-ditch attempts to speak directly to the youth on Instagram were simply met with more ridicule and spin-off