Listen to this article:

‘Na Iran ne kiya na Roos ne,

Angrez ko tabaah kiya kartoos ne.’

(The British were not defeated by Iran or Russia, but by the cartridge.)

Substitute angrez (the British) for National Democratic Alliance and kartoos (cartridge) for the cockroach-led siege of Delhi, and you will get why these post-1857 mutiny lines – ascribed to the last Moghul, Bahadur Shah Zafar – swam to mind as one read the latest reports on the matter. 

The use of profanities by both girls and boys seems to have stung senior politicians, bhakts and the mainstream media. Those foul memes on social media and irreverent pop culture songs and slogans in a strange patois of Hindi and Afro-American English have drawn blood. But there was also something darkly comic about this vision of India through the eyes of Gen Z. The absurdity of their own situation was not lost on the young protesters themselves. But they reveled in the eyeballs they drew. Both the mainstream and social media used their latest word plays as headlines, often the story underneath hinting at dark threats that would soon force them to put out such stuff to prevent it going viral. A crackdown against the slogans followed predictably soon after, but it strangely made most of us realise how an entirely new generation of lambs gambolling happily, freely and without fear can be so highly provocative to the state after the long silence of the ageing sheep.

The well known performer Varun Grover hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that the words termed ‘objectionable’ were not cuss words now a regular part of the everyday vocabulary of the Gen Z. Denied a voice by the mainstream media, the youth was using social media as a public space to connect with their peer groups. In this dark moment in history, these voices were suddenly being seen as a challenge to a WhatsApp-loving passive system that had coined the pejorative ‘cockroaches’ for the hordes of India’s young jobless wandering the streets. 

A dying national language

The cockroaches, as is their wont, greedily nibbled........

© The Wire