CJP protest: The youth movement India's Modi didn't see coming
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Why have thousands taken to the streets? India's cockroach protest explained
India correspondent Published 24 July 2026, 00:41 BST It began with a fear familiar to millions of young Indians: if the examinations that determine their future cannot be trusted, what can?
Weeks later, on Monday, tens of thousands of young men and women tried to march on India's parliament. Police responded with tear gas and baton charges. Thousands more have returned to the streets in the days since.
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement born out of anger over repeated examination paper leaks , has quickly become India's biggest student mobilisation in years.
It is demanding education reforms and the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. At its centre is activist Sonam Wangchuk, who says he lost 11kg (24lb) during a 26-day hunger strike in support of the movement. He ended his fast late on Thursday, but student leaders say the protests will continue until their demands are met.
The obvious question is whether this is simply another student protest - or the beginning of something larger.
History offers reasons for both caution and optimism.
Student movements have periodically transformed Indian politics. The Nav Nirman agitation in Gujarat helped trigger veteran socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan's movement against former prime minister Indira Gandhi in the 1970s. Others have erupted dramatically before fading away.
What makes the CJP unusual, however, is not simply its scale but the nature and breadth of its grievance.
Unlike many of the biggest protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government over the past decade - whether over citizenship , farm laws or other contentious policies - this movement is not fundamentally about ideology. Nor is it rooted in the interests of a single community or social group.
Instead, it questions whether the state can still guarantee fairness in the examination system that millions of young Indians see as their principal route to social mobility.
"The exam and education system cuts across caste, class and gender to quite a large degree," Yamini Aiyar, Senior Visiting Fellow at Brown University, told the BBC. "The core constituency coming to these protests doesn't represent a singular interest group."
That breadth is also what makes the movement politically distinctive.
"This movement centres on administrative failure," Rahul Verma, a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, a Delhi-based think tank, told the BBC. "The state's inability to conduct examinations fairly and prevent paper leaks makes it a very different kind of political challenge to the BJP."
Why are thousands protesting for education reform in India?
That difference, he argues, changes the politics. Unlike earlier protests rooted in ideology or policy, this one questions the BJP's ability to govern. "They must recalibrate their strategy," Verma says.
Many of those protesting, he adds, are not natural opponents of the BJP.
They are "aspirational young Indians and their parents who see these exams as a path to upward mobility". Because the grievance is about governance rather than ideology, he argues, the BJP cannot easily rally its supporters or deploy the political counter-narratives that helped it confront earlier protest movements.
Monday's demonstrations appeared to reinforce that assessment.
For the past two weeks, comparisons with the anti-corruption movement of 2011 had largely centred on the CJP's impressive online reach, while sceptics questioned whether digital momentum could spill onto the streets. Monday's turnout suggested it could.
Joyojit Pal, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies technology and society, says social media has become "a tinderbox waiting to explode with the next thing", its speed and reach driven by emotion.
Long-simmering frustration over the state's lack of accountability created the conditions for this "implosion", he told the BBC, adding that the architecture of social media makes such eruptions likely to recur.
The question now is whether that online surge has become something more enduring.
"I think Monday's gathering indicates this movement may have crossed a tipping point," Verma says. Whether it grows from here, he adds, will depend largely on how the government responds.
For Aiyar, Monday's protests revealed something equally significant. Student unions, Left groups and organisations such as the Bhim Army, a Dalit rights group, were present, but they were ultimately "outnumbered by an organic outpouring of students from all over the country".
"That's unique compared to any significant protest in India's recent history," she says.
Just as significantly, Aiyar believes the movement has already outgrown the organisation that sparked it and Wangchuk's hunger strike.
"The catalyst may have been the CJP," she says, "but it became bigger than them."
Students came not only because of the state's handling of the protests, she argues, but because they wanted "a space and a site to express the deep frustration" they had been carrying for some time. "The memes, posters and slogans suggested grievances extending well beyond exam paper leaks."
After initially leaving the response to ministers and party spokespersons, the ruling BJP party's top leadership stepped in on Wednesday. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh accused the opposition of using students "as a political tool" while insisting the government remained committed to addressing their concerns through parliament.
Modi addressed the issue publicly for the first time on Thursday.
"Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth," he wrote on X, announcing fast-track courts to ensure "swift and stringent punishment" for those involved in paper leaks. "Those who try to harm the future of our youth will not be spared."
Whether those…
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