India Unleashes “Massive Crackdown” on Youth-Led Cockroach Movement After Education Minister’s Ouster

We go to New Delhi for an update on India’s youth-led, anti-government “Cockroach” movement. After weeks of street protests against Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the ruling BJP party, Pradhan tendered his resignation on Saturday. Now, however, protest leaders are accusing right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of reneging on his promise to not take punitive action against demonstrators. “Because this government and its policy is, and has always been, that of vengeance, … we are witnessing a massive crackdown on student activists across the country,” says Neha Bora, a doctoral student at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the national president of the All India Students Association. Bora spent 23 days on hunger strike during the protests.

Indian writer and artist Shuddhabrata Sengupta points out that the movement is not the first major “Gen Z”-led protest in the country. Six years ago, India’s streets exploded in protest of the Citizenship Amendment Act, which purported to provide asylum seekers from religious minority groups a path to citizenship, but excluded Muslims, who face severe levels of persecution under the BJP’s Hindu nationalist government. “There’s clearly a restlessness for change, unwillingness to accept the lies and the slander that the regime produces on a daily and a nightly basis,” says Sengupta.