The Cockroach Janta Party’s protests and achievement matter. But they raise an interesting question: How much of the BJP’s apparent command over India’s digital sphere has rested on genuine organisational power, and how much on widespread belief in that power?
For more than a decade, the BJP has appeared to possess an almost unbeatable communications machine: formal IT cells, WhatsApp networks and armies of supporters able to amplify a narrative or descend upon dissent. Studies have documented centrally initiated BJP messaging carried out by voluntary supporters. But the speed and scale of the CJP rupture suggest that this machinery was never as centralised or omnipotent as commonly imagined.
The BJP possessed considerable digital power. Yet its greatest political asset may have been the belief that this power was unlimited.
Two institutions helped construct this image: the BJP’s party infrastructure and largely compliant mainstream news channels. The party generated messages; a section of the media certified their dominance. Coordinated campaigns and attacks on critics were presented as evidence of a single command centre.
Much of the intimidation, however, did not require continuous centralised control. It could be produced by decentralised supporters and trolls, rewarded by platform algorithms.
To citizens watching this, the distinction hardly mattered. The result was a sense that the BJP could see everything, amplify anything and suppress anyone. Critics expected to be trolled. Others assumed that opposition would disappear beneath coordinated content. The party did not need to silence every critic if citizens had concluded that criticism would be lonely, costly, futile and life endangering.
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Silence amplifies a false belief
Turkish-American political scientist Timur Kuran’s theory of preference falsification offers the clearest explanation for the stability of this order. Kuran explains why people conceal what they privately believe and publicly conform instead. They may fear punishment or isolation. They may also believe that almost everyone else supports the prevailing order. When many people do this at once, they create a collective illusion.
The BJP’s dominance may have rested partly on such an illusion. Citizens did not merely believe that its machinery was powerful; they believed that everyone else believed it was all-powerful.
Any young person angry about paper leaks or unemployment asks whether others share that anger. If they encounter only silence, or trolling, they begin to conceal their own dissatisfaction. Silence then amplifies the false impression that everyone else accepts the status quo. An equilibrium of misperceptions prevails.
The CJP-led movement punctured this equilibrium.
Its importance lay not only in its demands but in its ability to provide a potent public signal. The memes, reels and irreverence revealed that dissatisfaction was neither private nor marginal. Young Indians could recognise themselves, and one another, as part of a consequential constituency.
Once a few people expressed dissent openly, others discovered that they were not alone. Kuran describes how such moments produce a preference cascade. A few people cross the threshold for speaking. Their visibility lowers the cost for others. Each new voice makes the next one easier, until opposition that appeared negligible expands with startling speed.
The CJP didn’t create the underlying anger; it revealed it. The rupture reflected less a sudden change in young Indians’ preferences than a correction of their beliefs about what others privately believed.
This is the magnified version of the “crack in the monolith” that Prof Ashutosh Varshney referred to in his column in The Indian Express. The BJP’s organisational infrastructure may still hold, but the belief that its control was absolute and resistance was futile no longer does.
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Can the CJP stay ahead?
The episode also reveals the double-edged character of decentralised digital politics. The BJP’s system was formidable because supporters could act without awaiting instructions. Yet a public sphere that is not centrally controlled can also be disrupted by an outsider who speaks its changing language more fluently. The CJP movement entered through a different platform and narrative. Its humour made conventional responses appear heavy-handed.
But a crack is not a collapse. The BJP has already begun to adapt. Its leaders and social-media operations are learning the movement’s visual language and cultural references. The comments of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat about Gen Z suggest an effort to define this constituency, while new BJP reels show how quickly an established organisation can borrow its challengers’ language.
Its most effective strategy may not be outright suppression. It may be to acknowledge “legitimate” grievances while separating them from the movement; adopt Gen Z’s vocabulary while detaching it from the CJP’s demands; and introduce partisan, ideological or communal divisions into a constituency temporarily united by anger.
The CJP faces the opposite challenge. Its decentralisation gave it authenticity and allowed it to grow before it had a settled leadership or programme. But moving from memes to mainstream politics requires holding on to the issue that produced the movement. In a press interview, Saurav Das responded to BJP MP Kangana Ranaut’s remark calling young protesters ‘Generation Gutter’ by saying her own party does not take her seriously. This shows how quickly a movement centred on examination failures and accountability can slip into personalised political sparring.
The opening created by a preference cascade is real, but it does not determine who turns that opening into political power. The risk is that CJP leaders will become increasingly conventional just as the BJP becomes increasingly fluent in Gen Z language. The movement has broken the illusion that the BJP’s digital dominance is absolute. Whether it can retain control of the narrative it has opened remains uncertain.
The author is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her forthcoming book (2026) with Cambridge University Press is titled “Representation from Below: The Grassroots Origins of Women’s Political Power in India.” She tweets @goyal_tanushree. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)