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Monday briefing: How the Cockroach protests have exposed the cracks in India’s government
Narendra Modi has never been challenged so publicly and so widely. Photograph: Altaf Hussain/Reuters View image in fullscreen Narendra Modi has never been challenged so publicly and so widely. Photograph: Altaf Hussain/Reuters Monday briefing: How the Cockroach protests have exposed the cracks in India’s government In today’s newsletter: Across the country, a younger generation is turning private disillusionment into public defiance against a government that once felt untouchable Good morning. As flames engulfed parts of France and Spain this weekend, in India, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, was trying to put out a very different kind of fire. Thousands of people arrived in Delhi on Saturday to demand the resignation of his education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. When he stepped down in the early afternoon, the protests turned into a triumphant block party. But the Cockroach protests that have swept through India this summer are about much more than a single minister. They have humiliated Modi and undermined the indomitable power of his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) that has ruled India for the past 12 years. They’re also a lesson in using humour to political advantage. Modi likes to present himself as an infallible messiah , but young people have mocked the prime minister online and in the streets, calling him a “56-inch monkey” (a reference to Modi boasting about his ample 56-inch chest), and parodied his social media addresses. “Hating Modi is cool on the internet now, after years of criminalising dissent,” one told a reporter. Now the protesters have secured a victory, will their calls for revolution continue? For this morning’s newsletter, I spoke to our south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen , who has been reporting on the “Cockroaches” in Delhi , about what their anger stems from and what it means for the BJP. That’s after a roundup of the biggest stories of the weekend. Weekend roundup Wild fires | Authorities in France battled to contain a huge wildfire near Bordeaux in the south-west as Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, warned Spain and the Iberian peninsula were suffering the effects of the climate emergency. Germany | A man suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival then going on a knife rampage in an Islamist terror attack has been shot dead by police , German officials have said. Iran | The US has paused strikes on Iran for a second night as top military officials advised Donald Trump to halt his bombing campaign, and diplomatic negotiations have continued to avoid a return to all-out war. UK politics | Britain’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, is to indicate he will put the climate crisis and overseas development at the heart of UK international relations by taking up the country’s seat on the board at the World Bank. UK news | Five Palestine Action activists face being sentenced as terrorists for breaking windows and throwing red paint at a branch of Barclays Bank in Lancashire. I
