Where do Muslim youths fit in India's 'Cockroach' protests?

Where do Muslim youths fit in India's 'Cockroach' protests?

Submitted by Nabiya Khan on Fri, 09/04/2026 - 20:06 The country harbours a political culture where exercising the right to demonstrate is safer for some than for others A CJP supporter waves the national flag a day after the resignation of India’s education minister, in Mumbai on 26 July 2026 (Punit Paranjpe/AFP) Off As protests by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in Delhi gained momentum this summer, many Muslims urged their children not to participate.

Some mosque announcements cautioned Muslim youths to stay away - not over any clash with the movement’s ideals, but amid fears of harassment, false charges, hounding and intimidation.

For many students, attending protests at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar was a way to show they cared enough about the issues facing the country to show up.

But Muslim students in today’s India must always weigh the consequences of their actions. Other Muslim student activists have spent years languishing in jail, without trial and with little hope of bail.

Some have had their homes demolished. In the eyes of the government, Muslim comes first, and student later.

Staying home might look like political apathy from the outside, but inside the community, it is a safety valve, underscoring the limits of what Muslims in India can afford to do.

For a generation of young Indians, the CJP has made it easier to imagine themselves as political actors.

The movement - which started out as a joke after appalling remarks by Chief Justice Surya Kant, who compared unemployed youths to “cockroaches” - quickly moved from social media to the streets.

As the protests spread nationwide, they attracted large numbers of young people angry about exam failures, unemployment, and the absence of accountability in a system upon which their futures depend.

Thousands marched towards parliament, and on 25 July, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.

Political exposure The warnings to Muslim youths, cautioning them against participation in this countrywide movement, did not stem only from fear.

They came from a community with years of experience as to what political exposure can mean.

Protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act, a law that excludes Muslim immigrants and refugees living in India from obtaining citizenship, are part of this same historical memory.

The ensuing crackdown culminated in February 2020, when state-orchestrated communal violence in northeastern Delhi killed 53 people, most of them Muslims.

The violence was followed by arrests under anti-terrorism legislation, with some of those arrested still in jail years later without trial.

For communities that have repeatedly experienced police targeting, surveillance and violence after political mobilisation, caution is based on experience.

Despite such fears, some Muslims still participated in the CJP protests; among them was Mohammad Junaid, who alleges that he was subsequently harassed by police.

You cannot claim to fight the disease, while telling people living with its symptoms that their suffering is a distraction from the real problem The CJP movement has made a point of saying that its politics belong to young Indians.

Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, has repeatedly argued that Indian politics has spent too long on Hindu-vs-Muslim issues, and that education and employment should take precedence.

There is a reasonable political frustration behind this argument. A student whose exam has been cancelled should not have to choose a religion before demanding justice.

For Muslims, however, communal politics is not a subject that can simply be put aside so that everyone can get back to talking about education and jobs. It follows them into those areas.

It affects how they are spoken about, how their neighbourhoods are policed, and how their political actions are read.

The history behind this is longer than Prime Minister Narendra Modi or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Author Vinayak Damodar Savarkar set out the ideological foundations of Hindutva in his 1923 work Essentials of Hindutva, defining the nation through an idea of Hindu cultural belonging that placed Muslims and Christians outside the same conception of national identity.

Modi’s years in power have merely brought an old majoritarian politics deeper into the institutions and everyday life of the country.

Language of incitement There have been vigilante attacks on Muslims, unlawful demolitions of Muslim homes and businesses, and the expulsion of Bengali-speaking Muslims and Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh.

Modi himself made Muslims a central target of his 2024 campaign. This is the environment in which a Muslim student decides whether a protest is worth attending.

At the same time, the language of incitement coming from the government has continuously shifted.

Modi recently revived the term “ dimagi Naxal ” to refer to an intellectual insurgency, and the BJP quickly turned the phrase into a coordinated meme campaign on social media, targeting CJP protesters, among others.

Muslims know this language well. They have been called infiltrators, terrorists and anti-national long before the introduction of “dimagi Naxal”.

This does not necessarily mean that every Hindu sees Muslims as a threat, but it does mean that political parties can build an electoral advantage by making Muslims the group against which the majority is asked to measure its own safety and interests.

For Indian Muslims the end times have arrived Read More » In a country where the BJP has won a third consecutive national term by pushing a project based on the systemic extermination of Muslims, these politics cannot be treated as background noise.

That is why blanket statements about “fighting for Indian youth” - while avoiding the word “Muslim”, or refusing to discuss Muslim political prisoners - creates a problem.

The CJP can decide not to make Muslims its organising constituency, but it cannot assume that refusing to name Muslims makes communal politics less real.

The success of the CJP thus leaves India with a problem larger than exam leaks. The movement showed that young people can organise, sustain pressure, and make a government act.

A democracy cannot measure the health of its protest culture only by the number of people who turn up.

It has to ask who can turn up without calculating how their surname, neighbourhood or religion might affect them after the protests. The BJP has made communal politics part of everyday life in India.

Muslims have lived with its consequences for years: being called infiltrators and security threats, as their neighbourhoods, homes and activities come under increasing scrutiny. These are not side issues.

You cannot claim to fight the disease, while telling people living with its symptoms that their suffering is a distraction from the real problem.

A country can have a constitutional right to protest, while still harbouring a political culture where exercising that right is safer for some than for others. That gap is where democracy is tested.

India’s young Muslims know this already. The CJP movement should learn it before it can honestly speak for all.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Islamophobia Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0