Stepping past the mid-twentieth century and standing at this threshold of the twenty-first century, India today is positioned in an unprecedentedly advantageous demographic sweet spot. The pulse of the world’s largest youth force now beats in the veins of this country. This massive presence of the younger generation presents to the state apparatus both an infinite possibility and a profound test at the same time. Only by understanding the psychological canvas of this new generation can the political and social future of tomorrow’s India be discerned. Recently, in Mumbai, Dr Mohan Bhagwat, the Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, participated in an engaging dialogue with the representatives of this young generation, namely Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha. A startling truth emerged from his assessment. He termed this generation as the “most honest and truthful” generation of India. According to Dr Bhagwat, the hearts of the young men and women of this generation harbour a deep, simple, and sincere yearning for patriotism and selfless service. They are no longer willing today to blindly accept any dogma or ancient custom; they require rational explanations and logical answers. And in their quest for these answers, they need boundless love and empathy.
In a democratic state system, Dr. Bhagwat has analysed the anger of these youths and its expression with a highly distinct dimension. In his view, when formal dialogue or two-way discussion stalls in a democracy, organizing a movement on the streets can actually emerge as a valid means of protest or for building consensus. A movement is not an isolated matter; it is also a form of difficult dialogue. However, this protest should have a specific goal and language. Comparing the tradition of dialogue with India’s ancient philosophy of Shastrartha, the Sarsanghchalak reminds us that there exists no cheap ego of victory or defeat. In Shastrartha, there is Purvapaksha (the opposing view) and Uttarapaksha (the counter-argument), through whose joint churning the outline of the ultimate truth is unveiled. But when the simple emotion of this constructive protest is abused to sow the seeds of a well-planned political conspiracy, and when that movement leaves the formal constitutional path to step onto the path of anarchy, only then do the integrity of society and the state fall into a grave crisis. The CJP movement that occurred in recent times—popularly known on net media as the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’—needs to be considered as an important ‘case study’ of India’s national security and political landscape. This was not a sudden outburst of student discontent, but was rather the result of a well-planned and long-term process. To understand the dynamics of this complex movement, it is essential to analyse its chronology, specific methodology, institutional support system, and, above all, its underlying ideological foundation.
Failed Attempt to Manipulate Youth
Looking at the chronology of the movement, clear evidence of its artificial structure is found. The movement was initiated by Abhijeet Dipke, residing in the US. When CJP first stepped onto the digital stage, it achieved unprecedented social outreach within just two to three days. Encouraged by this initial virtual success, Dipke arrived in India on June 6 and initiated direct protests from June 7.
The CJP protesters adopted precisely this Gramscian strategy, the theoretical term
for which is ‘Alternative Politics’
However, that massive online publicity did not align with the ground realities of India. Even though Dipke travelled from city to city across India from June 7 to June 19 attempting to build a mass movement, it ended in complete failure. Receiving no significant response, a permanent sit-in demonstration was started at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar from June 20. It is from this phase that a massive change was observed in the overall form, grandeur, and aesthetics of the movement.
How a vast organisational web was spread by leveraging a natural grievance of the students can be understood by reviewing the long list of entities that joined this movement. Seizing the opportunity of it being a youth and student movement, Leftist student organisations ‘AISA’ (All India Students Association) and ‘SFI’ (Students’ Federation of India) came to the forefront of the stage and took entire logistics under their control. Immediately afterwards, international and national level organisations like ‘Amnesty International’, ‘Human Rights Watch’, and ‘PUCL’ (People’s Union for Civil Liberties) joined. They were accompanied by tribal organisations (like the All India Union of Forest Working People, BAPSA) and the All Tribal Assam Students’ Union. Radical feminist organisations like the National Federation of Indian Women, as well as religious-political platforms like the Students Islamic Organisation (SIO) and the Minority and Bahujan Right Forum, alongside elite Christian institutions like the United Christian Forum and the All India Catholic Union, gathered under the same umbrella. Press associations like the Editors Guild of India and Reporters Without Borders, and farmer organisations like the Samyukt Kisan Mocha and the Indian Trade Unions Council, also became part of this coalition.
The underlying methodology of consolidating this highly diverse and conflict-prone coalition into a single platform needs to be deeply understood. From the stage of Jantar Mantar, the demands for student rights gradually faded away, replaced by hardcore anti-Sanatan Dharma rhetoric and provocative slogans of dividing the nation. Left-wing ideologues weaponised the anxiety and mental agony of ordinary students to hijack the leadership of the movement, effectively turning an apolitical protest into a pure political weapon against the establishment.
Gramsci’s ‘War of Position’
In the well-considered and extensive theoretical analysis of intellectual Atul Limaye, it becomes clear that the CJP movement was not merely a sudden outburst of student discontent. Behind it lay a highly complex chronology and a highly skillful methodology. Searching for the philosophical theory behind this struggle against the system brings us face to face with Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci’s theory of ‘Cultural Hegemony’. Gramsci was a militant activist and intellectual of the early twentieth century, whose political philosophy so terrified the then-ruler of Italy, Mussolini, that he was sentenced to life imprisonment. During his trial, the public prosecutor stood in court and declared, “We must stop this brain from functioning for twenty years.”
Sitting in the dark cell of prison, Gramsci analysed why traditional Marxist revolutions failed in the advanced capitalist countries of Europe. He demonstrated that the ruling class does not rule merely through law-enforcing state apparatuses (Political Society) such as the police, army, or courts, but they rule through Civil Society, such as schools, churches, mass media, and universities. Through this mechanism, they establish a kind of cultural hegemony or dominance in society, which portrays their rule and exploitation as ‘common sense’ or naturally normal to the common people. Therefore, before embarking on a direct armed revolution or a ‘War of Manoeuvre’ to capture state power, it is necessary to conduct a long-term, patient ideological war or ‘War of Position’ (War of Position), which will crush this established, so-called bourgeois cultural hegemony from within.
The CJP protesters adopted precisely this Gramscian strategy, the theoretical term for which is ‘Alternative Politics’. The core foundation of this philosophy is “the subversion of democracy through democratic means”. Since capturing state power overnight by winning elections in a parliamentary democratic system is impossible for them, they employ the strategy of weaponising the democratic rights of free speech and protest to render the pillars of the state machinery obsolete. As part of this alternative politics, they apply ‘Deconstruction Theory’ to attempt to destroy the deep-seated faith permeating through society by labeling cultural role models like Shriramchandra—the soul of Indian heritage—as anti-women or anti-Dalit. During the protests, the testimonies of the police forces deployed on Delhi’s streets painted a highly alarming picture. The provocative attire, indecent gestures, and abusive slogans of the protesting young women made the extreme degradation of traditional Indian values crystal clear. In this process of breaking down the family structure, a front-line leader of the leftist movement, Neha Bora, proudly propagated that her father, despite being an Indian soldier, severed ties with her because she engages in leftist politics. Glorifying this kind of family breakdown and paternal defiance as heroism is actually a conscious strategy to isolate the youth from the protective shield of family and tradition.
According to intellectual Atul Limaye’s analysis, there is a perfect five-step model of this alternative politics:
1. Tactical Infiltration: Systematically infiltrating individuals with leftist ideologies into the judiciary, education, and administration, and introducing concepts like ‘Critical Theory’ in academic institutions and diversity indices in the corporate sector.
2. Demoralising Institutions: Destroying public trust in key pillars like the Election Commission, the judiciary, and the police. Magnifying any minor administrative error on social media to build a well-planned ‘asymmetric narrative’.
3. War of Position (Narrative Warfare): Attacking traditional state integrity through literature, cinema, theater, and university syllabi.
4. Cultural Degradation: Normalising lifestyles that break down traditional family structures. 5. Street Agitations: Creating continuous street agitations and anarchy as the final stage to paralyze the state.
It is against this backdrop of crisis that the historical foresight and warnings of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar become extremely relevant today. On November 25, 1949, in his final address to the Constituent Assembly of India, Babasaheb issued three profound warnings for independent India. He stated in clear words that as long as constitutional and legal avenues remain open in the country, there can be no place on the streets for unconstitutional, violent protests such as civil disobedience, non-cooperation, or satyagraha. He characterised such extra-constitutional pathways in extremely harsh terms as the “Grammar of Anarchy” and warned that if this grammar is not abandoned, the palace of our hard-earned democracy is bound to be reduced to dust. He specifically warned against the inherent unconstitutional character of leftist and socialist forces, who use the shadow of the Constitution merely for their own self-interest and seek to tear down the constitutional framework from its roots at the first opportunity.
Hypoing of CJP Movement
The greatest contradiction and hypocrisy of the CJP movement is that they decorated the Jantar Mantar protest site in Delhi with portraits of Dr. Ambedkar and made a dramatic attempt to prove their legal and moral legitimacy through public readings of the Preamble of the Constitution. Yet, in practice, we witnessed an aggressive application of Babasaheb’s ‘Grammar of Anarchy’ by them. The leadership of this movement had the audacity to stand publicly on the street and reject the interim ruling (Direction No. 4) of India’s highest constitutional court, the Supreme Court. They threatened that if the legal investigation against violent rioters was not halted, they would paralyze the streets once again. As leftist intellectual Yogendra Yadav had remarked, “The future of democracy will no longer be decided by Parliament, but by the streets; not by elections, but by resistance.” This is in effect a heinous declaration of war against India’s parliamentary democracy and the Constitution, which were the lifelong work of Babasaheb Ambedkar. Analysing the data of the CJP movement, the mask of the so-called ‘spontaneous student movement’ falls away completely. Recent investigations and data analysis by Delhi Police prove that nearly 180 highly influential social media influencers and 3 highly professional PR agencies (among which ‘Barcode Entertainment’, recently raided by the police, is prominent) were active behind this movement. Millions of rupees were poured into this digital campaign to artificially make the grief and anger of students go viral. The Instagram platform was exploited to distribute intense mental excitement and emotion, which was subsequently transferred to the Twitter or ‘X’ platform as a pre-planned political weapon. Data shows that exactly 11 days after the peak of the movement was witnessed on Instagram, a political storm was raised on Twitter over it, proving that a well-designed and international-level digital strategy was operating behind the movement. However, the darkest side of this movement is its elitism versus the extreme exploitation and deprivation of grassroots workers. Looking at the aristocratic lifestyle of the main face of the movement, Saurav Das, one’s eyes pop out. He resides in a luxurious rented house in Delhi’s ultra-elite Greater Kailash-1 area, the monthly rent of which runs into several lakh rupees! Yet, he has no specific or visible source of income. There is also a profound anomaly regarding the source of crores of rupees for the highly expensive studies of the movement’s founder, Abhijeet Dipke, in the United States, given that his retired father’s monthly Government pension is extremely negligible. Promises of weekly sponsorship of over a lakh of rupees from external actors like US-based Osman Ali to keep the Jantar Mantar site active, and the conspiracy of dressing the extremist Hamim Mandal (arrested by the West Bengal State Police’s Special Task Force) in police uniform to execute sabotage in Delhi’s protest, make the international links of this movement crystal clear.
Constructive Message
What is the way to protect the youth power of the country from this moral and social bankruptcy? In his dialogue in Mumbai, Sarsanghchalak Dr. Mohan Bhagwat has pointed out some highly specific and constructive paths. He specifically warned today’s Gen-Z generation about the invisible traps of social media algorithms. Today’s social media is creating extreme polarisation and division in people’s minds. It generates an artificial ‘instant gratification’ or immediate satisfaction, pushing the younger generation into grave danger. Dr. Bhagwat reminded that instead of blindly imitating the aggressive ‘reel models’ of today’s social media, society should create healthy and constructive ‘role models’.
While delivering the true definition of leadership, he referred to a highly ancient and deep philosophy. A true leader is not someone who always wishes to remain in the spotlight. In the Sarsanghchalak’s words, “True leaders are those who remain behind. They work from within.” That is, a true leader always works from behind the scenes, discards his ego, and binds everyone together with the organisation. He mentioned five traditional qualities of an ideal leader: the capacity to sacrifice (patre tyagi – sacrificing for the deserving), appreciating virtues (gune ragi – passionate about qualities), sharing achieved success and happiness with everyone (bhagi parijan – sharing with companions), acquiring right knowledge (shastra boddha – knowledgeable of scriptures), and uncompromising struggle against injustice (ran yoddha – warrior on the battlefield).
Be it in education or environmental conservation, if society is to be directed on a positive path, change must begin from one’s own home. Movements like the CJP seek to strike at the very roots of India’s Constitution and culture by misdirecting the honest and intense emotions of the younger generation. We must resolve this crisis through the very Shastrartha or constructive dialogue proposed by Dr. Bhagwat. Tearing apart the toxic cultural web of Gramsci, we must build a positive, constructive, and state-centric consciousness. Let the tune of the youth’s song, instead of heading down the path of anarchy, resound like a sacred mantra in the holy sacrifice of nation-building—standing in today’s times, this is the only key to India’s progress.
