As I strolled around the Jantar Mantar astronomical observatory in Delhi on July 28, the atmosphere was finally calm. Jantar Mantar had been the focus of the recent “cockroach” protests, in which tens of thousands took to the streets to push for education reforms in India.

While police and riot control vans remained, life was returning to normality. Street vendors and small businesses were bustling again. I joined people drinking tea and heard a range of opinions. The resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, a few days earlier seemed to satisfy the protesters’ calls for accountability in India.

But there were still competing narratives as to what happened in those few short weeks of protest. To me, after talking with many people on the streets of Delhi, it feels as if six words changed the political atmosphere in India completely: “What if all cockroaches come together?”

These words were posted online on May 16 by 30-year-old Abhijeet Dipke, an Indian political communication strategist studying at Boston University in the US. He was responding to a comment from India’s chief justice, Surya Kant, made from the bench during a legal case.

While criticising attacks on the judiciary on social media, Kant said: “There are youngsters like cockroaches … they don’t get any employment, they don’t have any place in profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, some of them become RTI activists, some of them become other activists, and they start attacking everyone.”

Kant later clarified he had been referring to fake degree holders. But the remark was widely interpreted as a slur against jobless young people at a time of high youth unemployment in India.

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