‘The joke is on us’

THE post began with an apology. The writer Amitava Kumar explained that Facebook had blocked his Substack link in India, so he was sharing his essay as plain text instead. I read that line twice. Then I laughed, because I recognised it. In Pakistan, we know this routine well. The link that won’t open. The site that loads everywhere except here. The workaround that everyone shares and no one in authority admits is needed. Kumar was writing about the young Indians who call themselves cockroaches. Their movement began as satire, a joke party mocking the government over a leaked medical entrance exam. Then it became the Cockroach Janta Party. For over a month, young people camped at Jantar Mantar – Delhi’s iconic protest site. Now their anger has turned on a revision of the voter rolls that has, reportedly, stripped millions of their right to vote.

Last week, the state responded with brute force: thousands of protesters and journalists were detained; CJP leaders were picked up on arrival in Delhi, and mobile and internet services were jammed in most parts of the capital. India’s mainstream television channels looked the other way. Seen from here, none of this looks new. We have lived through nationwide internet suspensions. We spent more than a year with X blocked. We have watched names vanish from television screens, speeches go unaired, and protests barricaded before they began. We have seen leaders detained on their way to rallies and journalists told, politely or otherwise, what not to cover. If the government across the border has a playbook, some of its chapters were written here. But the cockroaches have a playbook too, and it is one we also know. They named themselves after the creature everyone wants to crush but can never eradicate. It is a brilliant choice. An…