It would not be a true Indian Gen-Z or youth-related protest if its humour did not make its way into the fray.
The protests at Jantar Mantar are still ongoing. At this point, though, they have gone beyond anything to do with the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), or Sonam Wangchuk, or the resignation demanded of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
This fight now belongs to the people, a show of true democratic power: that the government is there to represent the people, and that accountability is not something they can shirk.
Most of the videos and posts about the protests are rightfully calling out the unnecessarily strong action that is being taken against an otherwise peaceful protest, with Delhi Police officers using tear gas, rocks, and lathis against the people there, and detaining them when nothing else works.
From cracking jokes about “Leak in India” to making reels that riff on popular trends to raise awareness about the protest, to taking politicians’ own slogans and turning them against them – dark humour, memes, movie references, and more are as much a part of this protest as the emotional, heart-wrenching moments.
Is This The Funniest Protest Ever?
What makes this movement genuinely unusual isn’t just that it’s funny; Indian protests have always had slogans and slang, it’s how deliberately the humour is being used as the actual delivery mechanism for the anger, rather than as garnish on top of it.
At the June 29 Jantar Mantar gathering, protesters carried hand-painted signs that read more like punchlines than political demands: one played on the Prime Minister’s flagship manufacturing campaign, reading “We asked for ‘Make in India,’ you gave us ‘Leak in India,'” a direct jab at the repeated exam paper leaks.
Another simply read “Bro is still employed,” stuck next to a photo of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. A month ago, a widely covered stunt saw demonstrators inviting people to sign diapers and physically mail them to the education minister’s office, a blunt, absurd way of saying the exam system needed to “plug the leaks.”
Here, we have collected some more evidence of how ‘unserious’ this protest is, but it doesn’t take away from the serious anger and frustration that has reached a boiling point among Indian youth.
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Read More: Indian Gen-Z Aren’t Lazy Or Lack Ambition; It’s Something Else
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Slogans also ranged from the sombre and inspiring to those using pop culture references and memes to get the message across. One placard read, “Jaldi resign karo, kal subah Panvel nikalna hai.” In contrast, others read, “It’s so bad even the introverts are here,” and “Ek din education resign kar degin, minister rehen jayegin.”
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A social media user described Gen-Z’s attitude towards this protest by calling them the “most serious and unserious generation at the same time.”
The important thing to remember here, though, is that the comedy is absolutely not meant to downplay the severity of the situation. It’s simply a delivery system built for a generation raised on memes, deployed to make an old, exhausted complaint – a broken exam system, a government that isn’t listening – travel faster and further than a straightforward slogan ever could.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Hindustan Times, The Guardian, Reuters
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: Indian Gen-Z, Indian Gen-Z protesters, Gen-Z protesters, cjp, CJP protest, cjp protest delhi, cjp protest jantar mantar, cjp protest news, Dharmendra Pradhan resignation, education accountability, examination irregularities, Jantar Mantar protests, NEET paper leak, sonam wangchuk, Sonam Wangchuk CJP, Sonam Wangchuk hunger strike, sonam wangchuk hunger strike news, Sonam Wangchuk hunger strike reason, sonam wangchuk news, Sonam Wangchuk protest
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