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GWYNNE DYER: How a 'cockroach' party of young people is causing an uprising in India

Formed by frustrated and angry youth, the Cockroach Janata Party is fighting back against gerrymandering and racism in India

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is technically not upper caste, but he does have a high opinion of himself.

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“When my mother was alive, I used to believe that I was born biologically,” Modi told an interviewer two years ago. “After she passed away, reflecting on all my experiences, I was convinced God had sent me.”

Modi could use some help from God at this point, because his government has stumbled into a confrontation with the nation’s frustrated and angry youth. Half of India’s population is under 30, and although the economy is growing very fast (seven per cent last year), it is mostly ‘jobless growth’ (40 per cent graduate unemployment).

In retrospect, early 2024 was the time of ‘peak Modi’. He was convinced that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP — Indian People’s Party) would win a two-thirds majority in parliament in the upcoming election, after which he would change the constitution, put an end to the secular state, and build the Hindu-ruled religious state of his dreams.

The 290 million Indian citizens who are not Hindus — one-fifth of the population, mostly Muslim — would become second-class citizens under that new regime. The........

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