By K Raveendran
The humble cockroach has entered Indian politics, and the establishment seems uncertain whether to arrest it, ridicule it or burn it. After years of projecting muscular leadership, electoral invincibility and civilisational confidence, the BJP now finds itself confronting an adversary that survives without television studios, corporate donations, elaborate manifestos or permission from the police.
The latest contribution to this extraordinary political theatre comes from a Delhi Ramlila committee that decided a giant cockroach deserved a place alongside Ravan, Meghnad and Kumbhkaran. The organisers presented their insect effigy as a symbol of filth and fear. But the symbolism is irresistible. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke thanked them for the free publicity, demonstrating a political instinct that some considerably larger parties might envy.
Burning a 30-foot cockroach is certainly an ambitious exercise in pest control. Whether it improves sanitation is debatable. Whether it improves the visibility of CJP is considerably less doubtful. The organisers have effectively provided an advertisement that no political consultancy could have designed more imaginatively. The insect has been promoted from a kitchen nuisance to a mythological adversary.
The BJP has spent years presenting Narendra Modi as a leader capable of confronting formidable enemies. Now a movement named after an insect has acquired sufficient political visibility to provoke arguments about public order, patriotic conduct and the limits of permissible dissent.
Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were detained following their entry into Jantar Mantar, where they waved the national flag and protested against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Police maintain that the activists breached security restrictions and entered a venue that had been removed from the list of designated protest sites. Their lawyers dispute the grounds for continued detention. A special executive magistrate extended their judicial custody by two days on October 19, with another hearing scheduled for October 21.
The authorities allege violations of restrictions and conditions governing their conduct. Yet the spectacle of two young citizens remaining behind bars after a political demonstration raises an uncomfortable question about the proportionality of the response. Apparently, the national flag becomes a complicated object when carried by citizens demanding accountability rather than by ministers addressing carefully arranged audiences.
Dipke has accused Modi of hiding behind the police and using state machinery to intimidate young protesters. The Prime Minister’s supporters might reflect on the extraordinary publicity generated whenever the authorities treat a small protest organisation as a potentially serious public-order challenge.
Indeed, Jantar Mantar’s transformation from a recognised protest venue into a prohibited destination offers an impressive administrative innovation. Citizens may protest, provided they select the approved location, follow the prescribed conditions and avoid causing excessive inconvenience to the people whose decisions they are protesting. The cockroach, unfortunately for the authorities, has never shown much respect for geographical restrictions.
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s reported confidence that cockroaches pose no threat to the Modi government betrays the lurking fear rather than provide reassurance to the ruling establishment. If the government is genuinely secure against an insect-inspired movement, one wonders why its activities have become such a prominent subject of political controversy.
Confidence is most convincing when it does not require constant demonstrations of strength. A government enjoying overwhelming authority ought to be capable of tolerating a few citizens waving flags and shouting slogans without transforming the episode into a national confrontation.
There is an additional irony in the proposed symbolic extermination. Cockroaches have survived for millions of years, adapting to hostile environments with remarkable persistence. Political parties, by comparison, frequently struggle to survive a leadership dispute, an unfavourable election or an unexpected investigation.
The insect possesses neither a media management department nor an electoral strategist. It does not require defections, alliances or television debates to maintain its existence. It simply survives, which makes it an unexpectedly appropriate mascot for young citizens determined not to disappear from public life.
The government’s pandemic-era experience with symbolic public mobilisation also invites comparison. Modi’s March 2020 appeal to applaud frontline workers by clapping and sounding utensils was widely followed, although it was not presented as a scientific method of eliminating coronavirus. The subsequent spectacle encouraged its share of extravagant interpretations. The lesson should have been that symbolism can rally public emotion but cannot substitute for practical solutions.
Similarly, burning a cockroach effigy will not settle disputes over electoral rolls, just as banging utensils cannot resolve the grievances of unemployed young people. Political problems require political answers. Fireworks and percussion instruments are poor substitutes for accountability.
For the CJP, the controversy has delivered something more valuable than an expensive advertising campaign. Every public denunciation strengthens its chosen metaphor. Every barricade becomes a stage prop. Every argument over whether cockroaches threaten the government gives the movement another opportunity to ask why such a supposedly insignificant creature commands so much attention.
The authorities can enforce lawful restrictions, and courts must determine whether individual detentions are justified. But a confident democracy should distinguish genuine threats to public order from the embarrassment of being challenged by citizens with provocative slogans.
The Ramlila cockroach may disappear in flames. The political cockroach, meanwhile, has acquired another headline, another argument and another reason to crawl back into public view. (IPA Service)
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