Cockroach Janata Party

One of the numerous reactions on social media to the ban of CJP on X

When a former student asked my opinion yesterday about Cockroach Janata Party [CJP], the satirical movement someone started as a joke on social media, my response was: “A rather unexpected reaction to an unsavoury remark. I don’t think it will make any headway. But the initiative was good and needed.” The Government of India had not banned CJP on X when I made that response. Now with the ban, I am driven to second thoughts.

Modi’s government felt threatened when CJP’s followers [14 million] on Instagram overtook the BJP’s follower count on any social media. What any sensible government would do was to treat it as a joke that grew out of proportion and let it die on its own since most jokes have limited shelf life. Instead, the BJP got it blocked on X. Silly, indeed.

The satirical party was formed when the Chief Justice of India [CJI] described India’s young unemployed as “cockroaches.” Interestingly, when X blocked CJP, numerous other handles emerged instantly: IamCocroach, Cockroach Party of India, and Cockroach Janata Party (Gen Z) being a few examples.

A few of the new versions of CJP on Instagram

This deserves serious attention now. The joke has flown out of the shelf and become a national eroteme, to use an old term that carries nuances.

The CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke points out that cockroaches are famous for one defining trait: they are incredibly difficult to eradicate and survive in the harshest conditions. For a generation feeling economically marginalised, the metaphor fits with an agony that is more excruciating than insulting.

Labelling itself as the “Voice of the Lazy and Unemployed,” the CJP gave a massive, disaffected generation a way to talk about heavy topics without the crushing weight of despair. It channelled anxiety over unemployment, paper leaks like the NEET controversy, and inflation into collective dark humour.

The CJP pioneered participatory satire. They created Google forms to register as members. They drafted a mock manifesto [“Secular, Socialist, Democratic, Lazy”] that actually sneaked in sharp governance demands like banning post-retirement Rajya Sabha seats for Chief Justices and enforcing electoral bans for switching political parties. In other words, the CJP was shooting with a hidden derringer at the heart of the BJP’s venal politics. Very subtly and effectively, the CJP set up a fictional political infrastructure.

Whenever an establishment tries to silence humour, it tends to backfire. That’s called the Streisand Effect which says that an attempt to censor, hide, or remove information inadvertently causes the information to be publicised and spread much more widely than it would have otherwise.

Furthermore, many mainstream political figures like Mahua Moitra and Kirti Azad as well as many activists engaged with the CJP account, lending it institutional visibility and pushing it firmly into mainstream news cycles.

The CJP succeeded because it gave voice to the young generation who feel increasingly that traditional political structures are completely disconnected from their reality. A comic parody like the CJP feels like the most honest thing in a country whose ruling party is not only dishonest but also pretentious.

What the BJP should do now is some introspection and correct its own antipeople policies. Is it even capable of that?

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