On returning to India on June 6, the founder of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), Abhijit Dipke, led a massive Gen Z protest at Jantar Mantar, vociferously demanding Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation following the NEET paper leak and the colossal failure of his ministry in evaluating the answer sheets of millions of class 12 students. The spontaneous mobilisation of young students – first online, after 22 million followed CJP’s Instagram account, and then offline – is an outcome of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s remarks where he likened unemployed youth to “cockroaches”. The remark gained traction despite his clarification that his oral utterances in the courtroom were twisted by the media.Dipke delivered his speech while holding a copy of Ambedkar’s autobiography and attacked the fear-based politics, which divides people along Hindu-Muslim binaries. He sharply asked who gained from communal politics and if it created employment opportunities. His call “to lead this movement with love and peace” and without fear is evocative of Gandhi leading a non-violent struggle for freedom of India from British rule.”Gandhi on CockroachesIt is rather fascinating that Gandhi, with his uncanny ability to reflect deeply on the relevance of non-violence in manifold contexts, dealt with the cockroaches 100 years ago on April 18, 1926 when he wrote a small para in Navajivan under the caption “Non-violence.” On the centenary year of that writing, the CJP is engaged in a movement based on the culture of peaceful protest for saving the future of students from the rigged examination systems under the Modi regime. It is, therefore, apt to unearth how Gandhi located cockroaches in the larger context of shunning hatred and removing baser instincts from humans so that they would evolve to be genuinely non-violent.Gandhi addressed this question when a correspondent wrote to him about witnessing “small creatures swallowing one another, a lizard catching insects and a cat catching birds,” and asked whether he could be just a passive witness or kill the potential killer and prevent violence.” “Have I not seen such violence being committed?” Gandhi observed. “Very often I have seen a lizard hunting a cockroach and the latter hunting other insects. But I have never considered it my duty to oppose the law of the animal world – an insect sustains an insect’s life. I do not profess to unravel the dark mysteries of God, but seeing such violence often, I feel that the law of animals and of the lower orders of creation is not the law of man.”“Man has to make a determined effort to conquer and kill the animal within him and thus keep his soul alive. We have to learn the great magical formula of non-violence out of the conflagration of violence raging around us. Therefore, if man realizes his own dignity and understands his life-work, he should himself refrain from participating in violence and prevent inferior creatures as also animals under his control from tormenting one another. He can maintain that ideal only as far as he himself is concerned and if nothing else is possible, he can at any rate refrain from tormenting his brethren who are weaker than himself,” Gandhi wrote.“And even to maintain that ideal fully, he will certainly have to keep up his endeavours day and night unceasingly. Then will he be able some day to reach it,” Gandhi added.Lessons for the Modi RegimeAvoiding tormenting other human beings, who are weaker and vulnerable, is the vital lesson offered by Gandhi’s reflection on cockroaches. Dipke’s CJP is protesting against the torment inflicted on students by the Modi regime.The crude animal instinct has been reflected in the callous remarks made by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT cell and even Doordarshan anchors that a class 12 student is a Pakistani and anti-national because he pointed out that the answer sheet given to him was of some other student. Gandhi, without hating cockroaches or lizards underlined the necessity of humans to transcend the instinct to kill, so that the powerful do not torment others. It is now on Pradhan and the Modi regime to do better by our students.S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K R Narayanan.