How India’s ‘Cockroach Party’ went from viral meme to Western media darling

A US‑run parody, boosted by Western media and blocked by Delhi, shows how Gen‑Z narratives are used to challenge incumbent governments

Merely two weeks after India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, proclaimed a historic electoral victory in the state of West Bengal, the Indian political establishment found itself facing a curveball. 

On May 16, Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old graduate of the public relations program at Boston University, launched a website of the satiric Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a parody on BJP, with a cockroach as a symbol. 

The reason? An off-the-cuff remark by the chief justice of India, Surya Kant, in an open court, who compared young people to cockroaches. 

“There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI (Right to Information) activists and other activists, and they start attacking everyone,” he said.

Kant later had to clarify that he wasn’t talking of India’s youth in general, but specifically those individuals entering the legal profession through “fake and bogus degrees.” 

The careless remark was a part of specific conversation that was clearly taken out of context.

But the damage had been done.

Overnight the fake “cockroach party” became a sensation as millions of young people took notice, creating a frenzy that seemed dangerously close to replicating the trajectory, and chaos, of GenZ revolutions that toppled governments in India’s neighborhood recently – Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. 

The satire gained national and international media attention. Reports highlighted the fact that the number of followers of the parody party on social media exceeded the following of Modi's party.

The CJP’s Instagram account racked up 11.1 million followers in three days and is now at 22.5 million. By contrast, the BJP’s account has 9.4 million, despite being the dominant party in the country for about 12 years. The main opposition Congress party has 13.6 million followers. (Modi himself is in a different league, with 101 million.)

The CJP’s website lists more than a million followers as of this writing.

But a week later, on May 27, several key international outlets practically simultaneously published detailed reports on the “cockroach party” and its founder – specifically highlighting how it is a challenge to the Modi government. The timing was a coincidence hard to miss in the world of information warfare.

World’s largest party they said