Look, these past few months have been wild, right? One viral post in May turned into something nobody saw coming. Abhijeet Dipke, this 31-year-old guy from a Dalit family who’d been studying in Boston, posts six simple words after the Chief Justice’s “cockroaches” remark about unemployed youth: “What if all cockroaches come together?” And boom — the Cockroach Janta Party is born. Not a real party, more like a satirical pressure group that suddenly had millions of young people online saying, “Yeah, us too.” Unemployment, paper leaks, that whole mess with the education system — it all poured out. By July they’d forced Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign. That’s not nothing.
Fast forward to October. Same group is now asking hard questions about the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls — the one that deleted a huge number of names. Dipke and the others call for the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to step down. They plan peaceful protests at Jantar Mantar, then try the “Lehra Do Tiranga” thing at Central Park in Connaught Place. Police response is heavy: detentions at the airport, more detentions in the city, prohibitory orders, roads blocked, the works. Two of Dipke’s colleagues, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, end up in judicial custody. Dipke himself gets picked up more than once, signs bonds, gets released, the usual back-and-forth.
Then on 20 October, right in the middle of the festival season, Dipke puts out a video message. No big rally call this time. He looks straight at the camera and talks to the people he’s been calling “cockroaches” for months.
He says the last few days have been rough on everyone. Volunteers beaten up, detained, families stressed out of their minds. His own parents are worried. Same for Saurav’s and Ashutosh’s families. So his request is simple: for a few days, just be with your families. Festivals are here. Diwali is coming. Spend time with the people who love you. The CJP has no plans to organise any more protests till Diwali. Take the break. Breathe.
It’s not a surrender. He makes that clear. The movement isn’t going away. But right now the priority is the people who’ve been showing up — the ones getting pushed around on the streets while the real decisions happen somewhere else. He’s seen enough of the crackdown to know that the families are the ones paying the heaviest price. So he asks them to step back for a bit.
What hits different in the message is the quiet point about leadership. Who’s still out there when the cameras are gone and the police vans are waiting? Who’s still talking about constitutional rights and Gandhi’s non-violence even after getting assaulted in Jaipur and detained at the airport? Dipke has kept repeating the same line: peaceful protest is not anarchy. Questioning those in power is not anarchy. The Constitution gives you that right. The government that got elected by the people is supposed to listen to the people, not shut them down and call it law and order.
He’s not pretending the detentions didn’t happen or that the restrictions don’t hurt ordinary life. In earlier posts he pointed out the obvious: businesses don’t suffer because a few hundred kids walk with the national flag. They suffer when the government closes roads, suspends internet, turns a city into a lockdown zone. He’s been consistent on that.
The “real leaders” part isn’t some dramatic speech. It’s more like an observation after the dust settles. The ones who stayed non-violent even when provoked. The ones who asked people to go home to their families instead of escalating for the sake of optics. The ones who still say the fight continues after the festivals, but right now the human cost matters more. In a country where protest often gets painted as either heroic or dangerous with nothing in between, that pause feels like a different kind of statement.
Dipke’s whole thing started as satire. The website, the memes, the “cockroach” branding — it was funny until it wasn’t. Suddenly it was forcing a cabinet resignation and then staring down the Election Commission. From Boston student to the face of a Gen-Z pressure group in a few months. He’s been detained, released, detained again. He’s signed bonds. He’s still talking about Ambedkar and the Constitution more than any slogans.
Whether this pause holds, whether the movement comes back stronger after Diwali, nobody knows yet. But the message itself is plain: the “cockroaches” have been asked to rest for a while, be with their people, and remember that the real test of leadership isn’t how loud you shout on the street. It’s whether you still care about the people standing next to you when the police vans pull up.
That’s where things stand right now. Festivals first. Families first. Then the next chapter.
Sources:
Reuters reporting on Dipke’s rise and October detentions; Wikipedia summary of the Cockroach Janta Party timeline; India Today coverage of the 20 October video message asking supporters to pause till Diwali; NDTV report on the same message and family concerns; Hindustan Times and other contemporaneous reports on the Connaught Place plans, police notices, and Dipke’s posts defending peaceful protest; Dipke’s own X posts and video messages from mid-to-late October 2026.
@Rohit Manral
