Gen Z asserts secular republic, counters divisive agenda

 

Gen Z asserts secular republic, counters divisive agenda

Ground Zero

Jagtar Singh

The unprecedentedly angry challenge from sections of society that the Sangh Parivar has nurtured over decades has shaken the very foundations of the Mandir-Masjid political dynamic, forcing the Narendra Modi government to capitulate. Earlier agitations, including the farmers’ protest and the movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act, challenged government policies but did not fundamentally disrupt the political framework unleashed by the Sangh Parivar and the BJP with the Ram Mandir mobilisation beginning in 1989.

The Gen Z protesters, however, are rooted in the very middle class that had emerged as the most fertile ground for this divisive politics. The saffron leadership appears to have realised the threat posed by the proverbial cockroach to this carefully constructed framework. A cockroach is known for surviving the most hostile conditions; it can even feed on materials as inhospitable as cement. With the Uttar Pradesh elections not far away, the political threat is too serious to be dismissed.

What sparked the agitation was the NEET paper leak and, more importantly, the system’s response to it. The term “cockroach” emerged from a stray remark attributed to Supreme Court Chief Justice Surya Kant, and the BJP responded with its familiar political weapon—branding the protesters as anti-national. The agitation began at Jantar Mantar with demands for accountability and the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The Modi government eventually capitulated on the 36th day, July 25, when the resignation demand was met. Yet the larger question of accountability remains unresolved.

The agitation had initially begun as a one-day protest at Jantar Mantar on June 6, but turned into an indefinite stir on June 20. It entered another phase with the July 20 march towards Parliament, transforming what had begun as an issue concerning a paper leak into a wider expression of anger against a system perceived to have abandoned accountability.

The unlikely political symbol of this movement was created by Abhijeet Dipke, an otherwise unknown figure based in the United States, who reacted to the Chief Justice’s “cockroach” remark by creating a meme for the “Cockroach Janata Party” on May 16. He could hardly have anticipated the extent to which the meme would capture the imagination of young people. It became a vehicle for expressing the cumulative anger of Gen Z. Dipke arrived in India on June 6, coinciding with the beginning of the agitation at Jantar Mantar, and the response intensified with each passing day.

At the heart of the unrest lies a much deeper crisis: education, increasingly shaped by privatisation, is moving beyond the reach even of middle-class families. The education sector has virtually been captured by what may be described as an education mafia, operating in complicity with sections of the political and bureaucratic establishment. The alarm bells began ringing when reports of student suicides from Kota, Rajasthan—the country’s emblematic education market—started making headlines. The problem is not merely a failure of individual institutions; the system itself appears deeply rotten.

The same pattern is visible in the health sector, where the state’s gradual withdrawal from a basic social responsibility has incentivised large-scale privatisation. Education and healthcare, once regarded as essential public goods, are increasingly being treated as markets in which the ability to pay determines access.

The ambitions and aspirations of the new generation constitute a separate, though closely connected, question. India’s economy is lagging far behind the aspirations of its young population and is failing to generate opportunities commensurate with their expectations. Why should students be compelled to seek education even in countries that are less developed than India? The contrast with the past is striking. In the 1970s, students from countries such as Iran and the island nations of Asia and Africa came to Chandigarh to pursue higher education. The direction of educational migration has now changed, and that reversal itself is a measure of how deeply the country’s education system has deteriorated.

Lovely Professional University was among the first major private universities to emerge in Punjab, with its roots in Lovely Sweets of Jalandhar. Others followed, marking the rapid expansion of private education in the state.

Education must be made accessible and affordable to all, and this should form an essential part of basic reforms. It is the social responsibility of the state to provide affordable education and healthcare to its citizens. Welfare measures and freebies are not the same as social security; the latter is a fundamental responsibility of a democratic state.

The roots of this anger need to be understood to comprehend why the Modi government had to surrender within 36 days. The government appears to have lost the trust of a significant section of the younger generation. The videos uploaded on social media provide an insight into the mood of this generation. Its vocabulary is entirely different—direct, uninhibited and often sharply irreverent. More importantly, the political language is changing.

The common narrative that emerged during the agitation was that the BJP and the Modi government had spent years dividing people through the Mandir-Masjid and Hindu-Muslim binary. Young men and women spoke openly about their own parents having supported this divisive politics. Yet Jantar Mantar became a site where a counter-current began to emerge. The most positive dimension of the agitation was that the challenge to the politics of division arose from within the same social domain—the middle class—that had constituted one of the BJP’s strongest support structures.

The younger generation appeared to be reclaiming the secular republic. The Sangh Parivar and the BJP have often mocked the very idea of secularism, reducing “secular” to the derisive term “sikular”. Yet some of the most vocal and articulate protesters were young women who demonstrated a clear understanding of what they were saying and why they were saying it. It was evident that the vocabulary and terms of political discourse were changing.

One young woman went so far as to draw a parallel between what she was witnessing at Jantar Mantar and developments in Jammu and Kashmir. The repressive tactics deployed by security forces against protesters, she argued, had given her a new understanding of what people in Kashmir had experienced. Such comparisons are politically significant because they indicate how experiences of state power are being interpreted by a generation that has grown up after 2014.

The challenge to divisive politics was not confined to Jantar Mantar. There was widespread outrage over the alleged brutality of the security forces against young protesters in Delhi. After the protesters announced a march to Parliament on July 20, the police response reportedly included the use of pellet guns, tear gas and lathi-charge, injuring several protesters. Cases were registered against around 300 people. The confrontation triggered a chain reaction, with protests spreading to major cities across the country.

In Chandigarh, students and their supporters began gathering every evening in Sector 17, and the response was substantial. Beneath the local variations, the underlying narrative remained remarkably similar: a challenge to the politics of division and a demand for a different political vocabulary.

A united and secular India has therefore posed a serious challenge to the Hindutva political project. This may explain why the Modi government, after initially adopting a confrontational approach, eventually shifted towards damage control.

The second major outcome of the agitation is closely linked to the first: a challenge to the politics of fear that has been associated with the ruling establishment since 2014 and subsequently acquired the popular description of “bulldozer politics”. The process had earlier been visible in the targeting of institutions such as Jawaharlal Nehru University, where students were branded as the “Tukde-Tukde Gang”, another expression used to portray political opponents as anti-national. Over time, institutions across the country came under increasing political pressure. Alongside the politics of hate, a politics of fear became an important instrument of governance.

Then, suddenly, a volcanic challenge erupted from a social stratum from which almost nobody had expected it. The seismic eruption centred on Jantar Mantar has shaken the pillars of the saffron political establishment. What makes the moment even more significant is its timing: the opposition was in considerable disarray, with several regional parties experiencing internal ruptures and organisational crises.

The BJP, meanwhile, had been pursuing an ambitious political strategy aimed at securing a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha, which would facilitate constitutional and electoral changes, including delimitation and the proposed framework of “one nation, one election”. The emergence of a spontaneous youth-led challenge therefore complicates a political landscape that had appeared heavily tilted in its favour.

If the politics of fear and hate has indeed been challenged by the younger generation, India may be entering a new political phase. But the outcome will depend not merely on the anger of the protesters. It will depend equally on whether the opposition parties can recognise this changing political mood and consolidate the challenge to the Sangh Parivar into a coherent democratic alternative.

The significance of the moment lies precisely here: the challenge did not come from an established political formation, nor from a traditional ideological constituency. It emerged from the young, from the middle class, and from a generation that had largely inherited the political vocabulary of the post-2014 era. The most consequential question now is whether this generation will merely protest against the politics of fear and division—or whether it will redefine the terms of India’s political discourse.