The Kafkaesque moment for Gen Z

‘When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach in his bed.’
–The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Perhaps the founder of the sensational Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), Abhijeet Dipke, woke up in Boston on May 16 to a Kafkaesque moment in Indian Gen Z politics when he unveiled the idea of the CJP. What began as an online political satire almost immediately turned into a viral phenomenon, drawing more than 18 million subscribers on Instagram. The idea of embracing the cockroach as a political metaphor has blown up in the faces of many who were unaware of the simmering discontent among the youth. The CJP also has an X account and an aesthetically designed website, launched on the same day with AI-generated cockroach imagery.

Unlike Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, who was more worried about being late for work, the requirements for membership in the CJP are simple. With the slogan being the voice of the lazy and the unemployed, the CJP presents itself as a political front, which, according to Dipke, seeks to be ‘of the youth, by the youth and for the youth’, Abraham Lincoln style.

Membership, however, comes with conditions: one has to be quintessentially secular, socialist, democratic, and, more essentially, lazy. The deepest mockery of the condition of Indian youth today lies in the eligibility criteria themselves — one has to be able to rant professionally, remain online chronically and, obviously, be physically lazy and unemployed ‘in principle’. This biting satire seems to have brought scores of young people into the fold of what is rapidly becoming a Kafkaesque moment in the history of Indian youth.

According to Dipke, the spark for creating the CJP came from obiter dicta by the Chief Justice of India that unemployed, frustrated youth hit out against the establishment. The movement reflects the frustration arising from systemic flaws and failures that have left many young people unable to secure stable employment and livelihoods. Such frustration has also surfaced previously during protests over leaked question papers or cancelled examinations, including controversies surrounding the NEET examination. What the CJP brings to the 75-year-old republic is a language of satire—expressed in the eligibility criteria listed by the party—that exposes the deep wounds embedded in the psyche of Indian youth.

The CJP’s five-point manifesto reflects frustration with the judiciary, the Election Commission of India, corporate control of the media and what it calls biased journalism. Continuing on this dissatisfaction line, the CJP also demands a 20-year ban on legislators who defect from their parties. The manifesto additionally calls for equality of opportunity for women, seeking a flat 50% reservation for women in all spheres.

As the CJP became a viral movement on social media, Dipke, residing in Boston, was continuously accessible to the media. He was also responding consistently to comments on Instagram. After revealing his Dalit identity, he has had to confront caste slurs and trolling directed at him online.

Yet the Kafkaesque idea appears to have sunk deep into the imagination of Indian youth, which suggests that the movement is likely to endure and progress forward. Dipke has also been cautious and smart enough to reject comparisons between Indian youth and the recent Gen Z movements in neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh. He appears to remain steadfast in his belief that the Indian Gen Z, and youth in general, will pursue constitutional methods to achieve the political ends they intend to achieve. In this, he obviously invokes the intellectual and political legacy of Maharashtra’s Mahatma Phule, B R Ambedkar and Chhatrapati Shivaji.

Like George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and the more recent Ian McEwan’s The Cockroach, political satire is the staple of any civilisation seeking to survive absurdity. While satire and comedy provide great relief from such political and social absurdities, the CJP movement represents something unprecedented in scale and nature, riding on a technological advancement that ensures connectivity and facilitates freedom of expression, transforming protest into a novel online, unregistered political party.

All those who were initially amazed at the rise of the CJP but turned to casteist trolling after learning that Dipke was a Dalit have perhaps missed the beauty of the Kafkaesque moment altogether. They may yet wake up tomorrow morning, transformed into giant cockroaches themselves, to survive this summer of simmering discontent.

(The writer is an associate professor in the Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat)