In less than three months, 30-year-old Abhijeet Deepke is the founder and face of India’s Gen Z “cockroach” protests – has acquired celebrity status, usually awarded to a distinguished actor or cricketer.
In politics or activism, unless you come from a powerful family, such recognition can take years – if it comes at all.
“It was a roller coaster ride. Two or three months ago no one knew me. I would just sit in my room in Boston, watch documentaries or attend lectures,” said Diepke, who recently earned a master’s degree in public relations. at Boston University.
“Now I’m here, surrounded by hundreds of people and cameras. It’s a little overwhelming.”
In and around his hometown of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar in the western state of Maharashtra, Deepke is regularly crowded with people wanting to shake his hand or take photographs.
If attention bothers him, it doesn’t show. Perhaps because politics is not entirely new to him: before moving to the US, Dipke worked for three years with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), an opposition party that grew out of the anti-corruption movement.
Then, on May 16, Diepke wrote on X a post that changed his life: “What if all the cockroaches got together?”
This was in response to a remark by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant who compared unemployed youth to cockroaches. Kant later stated that his comments were misinterpreted and were directed specifically at young people who received fake diplomas, rather than the country’s youth as a whole.
But this clarification did little to quell the outrage.
Diepke said he wrote his post while playing a video game. “It was completely spontaneous. I had no idea it would become such a big movement,” he said.
Encouraged by tens of thousands of responses, he joined a handful of former colleagues and activists to found the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), whose name refers to both the Chief Justice’s remarks and those of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In addition to the support, Diepke and his campaign were viciously trolled by government supporters. Their website and X account were briefly blocked in India.
Dipke says that when he wrote to X and India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asking why the account had been deleted, he received a notice saying it had been closed under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, which allows the government to block online information “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of the state.”
The ministry did not respond to questions from the BBC on the matter, but The Indian Express and other media reported that government officials said the sites were blocked for “national security reasons.” In response to this, Deepke says he decided to return to India.
“I decided to return to India when my own government called me a threat to national security. This really hurt me. Shouldn’t my government support me when I’m abroad?” – he said.
“I decided that I needed to return to my country to show that I was not a threat to national security. I love my country, but not as much as you.” [the government] want.”