Cockroaches are hard to exterminate — as is the instinct to poke fun at power and hold it to account in a democracy

Ever since Chief Justice of India Surya Kant compared unemployed youth drifting into journalism and activism with parasites and cockroaches, his remarks have invited questions about the problematic language of dehumanisation and sparked a spiralling controversy. His subsequent clarification that he had specifically meant those who enter the legal profession, media and social media with “fake and bogus degrees” did not clear the impression of a repressive scolding not in keeping with the grace and generosity that remains the hallmark of his high office. The CJI’s remarks also contributed to an internet phenomenon, the formation, tongue firmly in cheek, of a meme party, the Cockroach Janta Party. That the X handle of the satirical collective has now been withheld, following a direction of the Centre, after inputs from the Intelligence Bureau, and that the government is now invoking national security, best makes the case that the CJI’s criticism was misdirected in the political context it comes in. The blocking of the CJP’s account points to where the real problem lies — not in the restless young of this country, employed or unemployed, with or without dubious degrees. It lies, instead, in the too-frequent resort by the state, strong-armed and hard-eyed, to weaponisation of the law to quell voices of satire and humour, difference and dissent.

The humble “cockroach” is part of an expanding lexicon. Undocumented immigrants have been called “termites”, “urban Naxal” is used to tar activists and critics, “anti-national” and “traitor” has become a stick to beat the political opponent with. The overuse of these terms shrinks spaces for political engagement with all points of view that is so necessary in a robust democracy. Amid this slide, however, the institution of the judiciary, and especially the Supreme Court of India is — and it must be — the space where individual freedoms and liberties are restored and protected. The SC is, after all, the custodian of the constitutional guarantees for individual rights, including the right to free speech.

In recent times, South Asia has seen the sudden, and even violent, outbreak of movements led by Gen Z that have unseated governments, fuelled by disillusions and discontents over dwindling jobs, rising prices and corruption and inequalities. When the CJI speaks about youth who “attack the system”, he overlooks a crucial Made in India difference and USP: The young have often, from the JP upsurge of the 1970s to the Anna Hazare mobilisation more recently, participated in and led movements against corruption, for reform. But India’s democratic framework has proved itself to be capacious, and its young have taken a position inside it, as part of it, not outside of it. This is why the CJI’s comments are even more dispiriting. This is why he must, with due respect, reconsider their framing. As for the mandarins in the Intelligence Bureau who cited national security to get the account blocked, surely they know that cockroaches are hard to exterminate — as is the instinct to poke fun at power and hold it to account in a democracy.