Yesterday, a movement that calls itself the COCKROCH JANTA PARTY 🇮🇳 brought hundreds of young people to Jantar Mantar. Cockroach masks, exam guides, chants about education. Real anger, real energy, 20 million Instagram followers made flesh. And then, almost immediately, the conversation shifted because somebody had chosen June 6 as the date for the protest, and June 6 is the anniversary of Operation Blue Star. Within hours, the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan‘s alleged failures were no longer trending. The narrative moved to choice of date, manner of protest, type of slogans and even handling of Delhi heat!
The protest got hijacked by its own oversight and its opponents need not do anything, rather a clarification got circulated by Government of India that no FIR has been registered against protesters.
This is what happens when a generation that is genuinely brilliant at gathering attention has not yet learned the art of channelizing it. The anger at Jantar Mantar was real because the cause, exam irregularities that have cost lakhs of young people a fair shot at their future, was serious and it deserve a full hearing. I myself had to deal with IIT-JEE being cancelled in 1997 which had drained all motivation out of me to study further, just sheer luck that I cleared the re-exam after spending all that time sitting alone at home.
The CJP is a fascinating phenomenon precisely because it proves that Gen Z can mobilise at a scale that older political structures like Indian National Congress or Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) or even Aam Aadmi Party have lost the ability to imagine. Twenty million followers in under five days, Sonam Wangchuk showing up as an honorary cockroach. Even seasoned politicians scrambling to attach themselves to its energy. The gathering power is extraordinary. But power without Vivek is like a well-sharpened sword carried by someone who has not yet decided which direction they are walking. It cuts, but not necessarily what was intended.
Protest, when it is at its best, is a deeply cultural act. The Salt March worked because every detail of it was deliberate, the date, the route, the image of an old man walking, the salt itself as symbol. Gandhiji went beyond just feeling the injustice deeply, as he understood that feeling alone does not move history. The protest had to be a text that the whole country could read, and it was.
An EduCultured youth carries this understanding alongside the anger. The anger is the fuel, Vivek is the steering. My book, Freedom! Let Us Begin the Journey…, explores exactly this terrain, how inner clarity and outward action are not separate questions but one, and what our civilisational inheritance actually has to say to someone trying to live and act consciously in the world today.