Here’s an open letter to all the Uncles and Aunties of India.
Dear Kaka, Kaki, Maasi, Maamu, Chaacha, Chaachi, Tauji, Buaji and assorted Behenjis… please don’t take it personally, but Gen Z is doing fine without you. Whatever happened at Jantar Mantar last week has nothing to do with any of us. It was their war. They fought it fantastically. And they really weren’t thinking of you when the pellets punctured their bodies and lathis rained down on them. Now that the protest is over, please leave them alone. They are not looking for your praise or validation. They don’t want awards from you. They aren’t wasting a minute scrolling through what you are frantically posting. They simply don’t care.
Stop making fools of yourselves by heaping praise on their acts of bravery, their fearlessness, their clarity. Stop beating yourselves up for ‘misunderstanding’ Gen Z. For wrongly labelling these kids. For criticising their screen obsession. For believing they were lazy and useless, selfish and indifferent.
This protest was not about you.
It was about Young India and Old India. New thinking vs outdated policies. It’s now a Gen Z ‘samaj’ without boundaries or borders. Take it or leave it.
Also Read: What does young India need? Kiren Rijiju and Sima aunty
The Uncle-Aunty cringefest
Don’t feel insulted if they call you ‘Unc’. Even Salman Khan is an uncle to Gen Z. So are cops. Each time a protester walked up to a group of menacing, armed cops at Jantar Mantar and enquired sweetly, “Uncle, why are you doing this to us? Why are we being beaten? What have we done to you? Uncle, please see, we have come with nothing in our hands, just posters and placards. Please don’t point guns at us,” it was one more poignant reminder of how these kids wage war. Age was their only weapon against elderly bullies. In the end, age won.
Late in the day, when the Prime Minister tried to win them over with that ill-timed, ill-fated midnight selfie video, age hit back forcefully. Gen Z saw a tired old man trying his best to pacify them… and failing. They were tiny tots in 2014. He is the only Prime Minister they know. It’s unlikely that they remember or give a damn about the PM’s boast back then about his 56-inch chest. What they saw at midnight was an old-fashioned Tauji type, with a deflated chest, attempting to woo them using their terminology (“Hello, Friends”) and getting it all wrong. “You are not our friend,” they promptly retorted on social media, adding, “We don’t beat our friends with lathis or use tear gas on them.” Touché!
Ditto with Salman Khan. Calling Sonam Wangchuk “Bro” and offering him a home-cooked meal from the Khan kitchen to break his fast attracted widespread derision, not praise. Maybe Salman thought he was being ‘cool’. But Gen Z rewrote the definition of ‘cool’. And this cringe message was anything but.
Bollywood has never looked this ‘uncool’. This irrelevant. Especially those stars who jumped in with inane ChatGPT-scripted posts once they had apparently received the green signal from their political patrons. The very stars whose box-office fortunes depend on Young India suddenly woke up, only to be met with mockery. Senior Aunty and Uncle stars such as Hema Malini and Anupam Kher added insult to injury, while Kangana Ranaut—just this side of ‘Aunty’ status—lost the few Gen Z fans she still possessed with her tactless remarks.
Also Read: Dear Bollywood, passive posts for student protests are just optics. You’re fooling no one
Resistance has been reset
The thing to understand is this: Gen Z does not need celebrity endorsements or heroes. It’s the reverse. Celebrities need Gen Z. This is a generation that marches, sings and dances to its own unique beat.
Sonam Wangchuk was an important figure who galvanised and inspired the protesters. Abhijeet Dipke and his team provided the framework. But let it be said loudly and clearly: the bona fide valiant hero of the protest was the anonymous Gen Z individual — the one who showed up day after day, risking a cracked skull, broken limbs and a body pockmarked with pellets. Yes, that person.
If there are heroes worth counting, they are these youngsters. They are their own heroes. They are their own leaders and followers rolled into one. Their coded lingo, signals and gestures belong exclusively to them. Stay out, boodhas and boodhis — they don’t need your stale advice. You failed your own generation! What can you do for Gen Z? Their spines are sturdier than yours ever were… beware of slipped discs.
Did Gen Z really reinvent resistance? An emphatic ‘Yes’. Going forward, anybody who burns effigies, raises naaras, holds rallies featuring oldies delivering ‘bhashans’ and giving ‘gyaan’ will be hooted and booted out. Humour, as Gen Z proved, is far more lethal than abuse and insults. A well-aimed phone camera works as swiftly and efficiently as any weapon. Even water cannons could not douse their energy — Gen Z converted the moment into a rain dance!
Uncles and Aunties, it’s not too late to learn from Gen Z that the best way to demand one’s basic rights is with attitude. Not aggression. At the height of the brutal response to the protests, a young girl walked up to a cop and cheekily asked, “Sir, do you plan to beat me up today? Please don’t! I forgot to have my protein shake.”
An older generation would have yelled and screamed, written a memo to the authorities, waved flags and worn black bands. These kids know their optics. And their dance moves. Watch the delightful reel of a young girl gyrating in front of a group of badgeless cops while her male friend shouts, “Basanti, in kutto ke saamne mat naach…”, referencing the iconic dialogue from Sholay.
It’s the age of “Kuchu Puchu, maan jao na” politics. Not sure our Prime Minister qualifies as a “Pookie”. But if his social media team is smart, it will definitely avoid cheugy (out-of-touch) posts and give him a crash course in phone-camera angles while filming selfie videos.
Now to wait and watch what Pralhad Joshi, the new Union Education Minister, does. He will need a good vacuum cleaner to suck out the dirt accumulated over decades in the nooks and crevices of an archaic and punishing education system.
No Country for Old Men is a brilliant film made in 2007. Maybe a desi version is overdue.
For once, Rahul Baba said something profound: “Narendra Modi is India’s past. The past can never fight the future.”
But remember, it’s not over till it’s over…
Shobhaa De is an author, columnist, social commentator, and opinion-shaper. She has written 20 books. She tweets @DeShobhaa. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)