What if all cockroaches come together? That one question, asked in jest by Abhijeet Dipke, a young man sitting far away in Boston, set off an unreal, almost cinematic chain reaction, that has today vertically split the country – into sceptics and supporters. The former are convinced Dipke is part of a larger right-wing plot to install Hindu Rashtra while for the latter, mostly tender teens, Team Dipke is the rare hope that will liberate them from the tyranny of examination scams and open a pathway to jobs.What lends weight to the second lot is the insane following that Dipke’s newly minted Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) has gathered on platforms like Instagram – around 22 million followers as against far fewer numbers for the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).Add to this the 1.1 million official members and the CJP’s cockroach morphs into a gigantic online version the like which India, and probably the world, has not witnessed before. Who could be the people following the CJP? It’s a safe guess that most would be from Gen Z – young, distraught students facing uncertain futures either because of frustrating paper leaks or because a flawed marking system has messed up their score cards (NEET and CBSE respectively). A smaller section would surely be made up of youths prospecting for elusive jobs. In the event, such was the humongous outpouring of anguish on his digital account that Dipke felt compelled to return to India.What is surreal here is not just the size of the following but the head-spinning speed with which the traction happened. By way of background, on May 15, 2026, the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Surya Kant, used an epithet to describe the country’s unemployed youth. He called them cockroaches. The next day, Dipke answered the CJI’s flippant remark with his own satirical, self-deprecating question: what if all cockroaches come together? Dipke was likely unprepared for the online storm that hit his Instagram handle.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.His followers quickly understood the cockroach symbolism, and appropriated it as their own. As cockroaches grew and multiplied on Instagram, Dipke, unable to hold off any longer, announced the formation of the CJP.Twenty-two days later, on June 6, he landed in Delhi and headed for a protest meet in Jantar Mantar, described as thinly attended by sceptics and as a grand success by the heady, sloganeering crowd that mobbed Dipke, encircled the makeshift podium and kept up a constant, throaty chorus for the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, education minister in the Narendra Modi government. ‘Dharmendra Prashan istifa do, istifa do’ they shouted, leaving no one in any doubt that their principal targets were the BJP and the Union government.There were also angry chants of ‘Godi media hai hai’, a reference to the pliant TV channels that echo the government line. The crowd forcibly evicted the few TV anchors who attempted to enter the venue. Right-wing activists shouting Jai Sri Ram were similarly rebuffed. Some angry ‘cockroaches’ captured the disruption on their phones to show that they were not going to put up with the attempted subversion.All this plus the fact that Ambedkar was the favoured idol for the gathering should have settled the question of where Team Dipke’s loyalties lay. Dipke himself walked out of the airport holding up a copy of Ambedkar’s biography. He would later say that he saw Ambedkar, Gandhi and Nehru as his role models. Clearly the CJP founder had figured that he had to click all the right (read liberal) boxes in order to establish his authenticity.For the naysayers, the biggest red flag of the CJP is its uncanny resemblance to the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement led by Anna Hazare. The IAC became officially active on April 5, 2011, fifteen years ago. Also platformed with Hazare were a bunch of political activists, among them Arvind Kejriwal, who went on to become the chief minister of Delhi, dislodging the incumbent Congress government. What was not widely known then but gradually became apparent was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS’s) covert role in promoting the IAC movement and providing it logistical support.Kejriwal was an expert communicator and designed outreach modules that helped to expand his base. One of his successful experiments was to ask for missed calls from voters to assess the strength of his support. Soon missed calls jammed his phone and those of his associates involved in monitoring the IAC’s growth. It was this connect with the people that hugely helped Kejriwal to gain a critical mass and form the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). In fact, if there is anything in common between the IAC-AAP and Dipke’s CJP, it is the effective use of communication tools. Missed calls then and Instagram now.Dipke’s CJP is less than a month old and it stretches credulity that in this short time it took lessons from the rightwing and acquired a political profile modelled on Hazare’s IAC and its then political offspring, the AAP. For one, the CJP has no mentor comparable to Hazare. Students and jobless youth form the backbone of its support and this support by its very nature is impermanent. It’s a good guess that the CJP’s adolescent supporters would move on once they get busy with their lives. To assign so much cunning to this innocent group is not just unfair and politically untenable, it is also to ask for ridicule.Nevertheless, conspiracy theorists of liberal persuasion have bent over backwards to prove that the CJP is nothing but IAC 2. One X handle accused CJP spokesperson Saurav Das of being a confidence trickster who, among all, played the smartest game. Only 27 years old, Das allegedly first established his credibility with investigative journalism involving extensive research, and then struck when the time was ripe – that is in 2026 when the CJP was born. So why did he have to take such a complex route? More to the point, what exactly did Das’s research yield? A first-rate essay on former CJI, D.Y. Chandrachud, for a start. The essay, which Caravan carried on its cover, became such a rage that the magazine had to separately put it up for sale. The X handle accepted much of this information yet issued a stern warning: “Never forget that CJP=IAC2 =AAP=BJP-RSS”.What the liberal opposition to the CJP conveniently forgetsMuch water has flown down the Yamuna since Hazare floated the IAC and Kejriwal founded the AAP. In this time, the AAP won two assembly elections in Delhi and missed the third because the BJP decided the party must end. The Union government aided by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) trapped Kejriwal and his ministers in a spurious liquor scam that all but finished the AAP. Virtually the entire AAP cabinet, including Kejriwal, was sent to jail for periods ranging from a few months to nearly two years. The BJP’s predatory move against the AAP was aimed at both diluting the party’s popular base and silencing outspoken voices like Kejriwal himself and Sanjay Singh, a powerful orator who has relentlessly attacked the Modi government from his seat in the Rajya Sabha.The liberal opposition to the CJP conveniently forgets this history when it excoriates the fledgling outfit as IAC 2. In this dangerous avatar, the CJP would naturally also be a front for the RSS. In part, this outrage stems from the fact that Dipke didn’t have to fight to get police permission to hold his Jantar Mantar meet. The police handled the CJP with kid gloves when its normal instinct is to act rude and rough with protesters. An example that is quoted is the contrasting treatment given to protesting Congress workers who on one occasion were doused with water cannons.What accounts for this evident discrimination? A possible explanation is that the government went soft on the CJP for fear of provoking a violent backlash from a predominantly Gen Z crowd. No government can afford this, especially in light of revolts that upended incumbent regimes in Nepal and Bangladesh.Dipke is shouting from the rooftops that he subscribes to social justice of the Ambedkar kind. His young band (excluding the core CJP members) is probably apolitical for now, preoccupied as it is with getting an education and finding job avenues. Would they even know that according to one narrative, they have sold out to the right wing led by the RSS?Vidya Subrahmaniam is a senior journalist.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.