‘I started a joke…now I get death threats’: Abhijeet Dipke on India’s Cockroach Party

1 month ago 42

#cockroachjantaparty What began as a tweet has snowballed into one of India’s most unexpected political phenomena. Abhijeet Dipke, who spoke to Newslaundry from Boston, is the unlikely founder of the Cockroach Janata Party. Within a week, this satirical movement amassed over a million registered members and about 500,000 signatures on a petition calling for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. In an interview with Manisha Pande, Dipke recounted how it all started. When Chief Justice Surya Kant remarked that unemployed youngsters who turn to media, social media, and RTI activism are “like cockroaches” who “start attacking everyone,” Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old Boston University graduate, fired back with a tongue-in-cheek tweet: what if all the cockroaches came together? The tweet gained immediate traction, with young people rallying around the idea of building a common platform. Dipke used AI to create a poster, adopted the CJI’s insults as membership criteria, and attached a Google Form that drew 5,000 sign-ups within hours. A website and five-point manifesto followed, and within a week, membership had crossed one million. On Instagram, the party has amassed nearly 22 million followers. But who exactly are the cockroaches? Dipke says his following is mostly Indian, aged 17 to 28, based in metropolitan cities, with 25 percent women. More telling, however, is that the bulk of this following is apolitical, i.e. people raised to focus on their exams and stay out of politics, who trusted that hard work would be rewarded. But the movement’s meteoric rise has come at a steep personal cost for Dipke. His Instagram accounts have been hacked, the party’s website taken down, and its X handle withheld in India, and he has been receiving graphic death threats on WhatsApp. His mother urged him to step back. Most strikingly, the Intelligence Bureau reportedly flagged the satirical party as a “national security threat”, a label Dipke finds “laughable”. When asked whether the platform could influence voting behaviour in upcoming elections, he asked: “Why do you think our account is being withheld and hacked?” His immediate priority, he insists, is ensuring the movement is not discredited, which is also why he has publicly refused to appear on what he calls “Godi Media” channels. Watch. This Press Freedom Month, pay to keep news free: https://rzp.io/rzp/mXpe9j3 Join us on WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va61PEo0QeacOqU9vr2k Download the accessible Newslaundry app: https://www.newslaundry.com/download-app Follow and engage with us on social media: Facebook: https://facebook.com/newslaundry Twitter: https://twitter.com/newslaundry Instagram: https://instagram.com/newslaundry

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