Indian youth use memes and humor to amplify protests against government

New Delhi – Protesters in India’s capital have combined street demonstrations with an online campaign that relies on humor and meme culture to criticize the government. The movement, dubbed the “Cockroach” campaign, spreads parody videos, edited clips and satirical posts that mock education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and pro-government news coverage.

Participants have turned clashes with police into viral content, using references to fitness apps and mobile games such as Subway Surfers. Some women post “get ready with me” style videos before marches, while others produce spoof broadcasts that lampoon state-run television anchors. The digital effort is coordinated by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party, which began the campaign two months ago and has helped broaden the protests from exam-scandal grievances to wider demands for accountability.

“If our phone data runs out, we can’t even bear that. So we’re definitely not going to tolerate this,” said a 25-year-old protester who asked to remain anonymous.

“We find speeches boring, we are the summary generation. We have a habit of consuming things in a short span of time, so we are using the same ways to put our message across,” said a 23-year-old student.

“We’re just answering him in his language,” said a 21-year-old student about the online parodies of Modi’s selfie-style video.

The protests, which began over alleged leaks of entrance-exam papers, have spread to other cities and now feature participants in Spider-Man masks, Batman costumes and placards that reference pop culture and artificial-intelligence jokes. By turning the prime minister’s own social-media tactics against him, the demonstrators aim to shape the narrative and pressure authorities amid a youth demographic that accounts for nearly half of India’s population.