On August 11, 2026, Umar Khalid marked his sixth consecutive birthday behind bars. Khalid, who was arrested under the pretext of the Delhi riots conspiracy case in 2020, is still awaiting the commencement of a trial. On this occasion, an audit of Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) spokespersons’ – Abhijeet Dipke, Ashutosh Ranka, Ratna Singh and Saurav Das – public social media accounts (X and Instagram) reveals that none of them posted anything that could be remotely considered as showing solidarity with Khalid and other political prisoners incarcerated under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).When asked about Khalid’s name being raised at the recent student protests, Das argued that the movement concerned paper leaks and the resignation of then Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and that bringing in other questions unrelated to education “risked fracturing the unity” as some people who disagree on these questions (likely referring to people who support Khalid’s incarceration) were mobilised around the student movement.In a world where issues are interconnected and intersectional, many disagreed with the CJP’s compartmentalisation of issues. To term a Muslim Ph.D. scholar and, above all, a student leader unjustly incarcerated by the state for six years without trial, as unrelated to an agitation about education is not only insensitive, but also exposes the lack of an ideological core in CJP’s politics. By asking for the removal of a jailed scholar from mainstream discourse, the movement ends up furthering the process of invisibilisation of dissenting voices – which is exactly what the state wants. To be fair, this is not a case of absolute silence. Dipke, when asked directly, has affirmed Khalid’s right to a fair trial. However, the operative word here is ‘asked’. Das, too, has written extensively in defence of Khalid before becoming a part of the CJP leadership. Given this posturing, it is pertinent to point out two contradictions.First, now that Pradhan has resigned and there is no imminent fear of mobilisation fading, why did not any of the CJP spokespersons publicly rally behind Khalid?Second, why did not any of the spokespersons condemn the recent cancellation of the book discussion event on Khalid’s Ph.D. thesis (now a book titled Fractured Communities) by the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration? Is taking a stand for academic freedom and dissent in public universities also a “deviation” from the issue of education?Also read: Of Shame, Impunity, Immunity: The Matter of Umar KhalidThe JNU student union was compelled to organise the event outside the School of Sciences building amid rain because they were denied the use of the auditorium space by the administration. This same administration had no problem in allowing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to use its auditorium for its centenary event celebrations.On April 15, for the first time in JNU’s history, the R.K. Puram unit of RSS was allowed to organise a major event titled “Yuva Kumbh” at the JNU convention centre. JNU’s Rector (Pro-Vice-Chancellor) Brajesh Kumar Pandey, who is also the Vibhag Sanghchalak of the same RSS unit, was one of the chief guests for the event. That an administration would deny space to its own scholar’s book discussion while rolling out the red carpet for the RSS is hypocrisy that deserved unambiguous condemnation. CJP’s leadership had none to offer.To add insult to injury, Das, in a recent interview with Frontline, said, “This is historic because in the past 12 years, nothing of this sort has happened. There was an atmosphere of fear that was created, fear around Modi also. All of this is gone now. It is almost as though the universe opened a door for India through its young.” This remark was widely interpreted as ahistorical and an insult to previous movements like the 2020-2021 farmers’ protest and 2019-2020 anti-CAA-NRC protests, where students of Jamia Millia Islamia and JNU had actively participated to protect the democratic and constitutional ethos of this country.As with the positioning of the CJP protest as “India’s first Gen Z protest” by CJP followers, this framing, too, was ahistorical and lacked nuance. After sustained outrage, Das quote-tweeted a post naming the farmer protests, the movement to save forests, the anti-CAA protests, endorsing it with the word “absolutely.” The acknowledgment, albeit substantive, came only after public pressure, and by amplifying someone else’s words rather than articulating the correction himself.Read together, these instances depict a pattern of not proactively rallying behind political prisoners or calling out the RSS-BJP nexus vis-à-vis Indian universities because it is “too risky or polarising.”With “national media” actively funnelling misinformation while piggybacking the state, the lines between reality and propaganda have gotten murkier than ever. A substantial portion of people still attribute slogans such as “Bharat tere tukde honge (India you will be broken into pieces)” to Khalid and other JNU activists. They have internalised him as a “terrorist” without even reading any of his works or, for that matter, ascertaining the facts of the UAPA case against Khalid.The state has thus managed to create a certain kind of knowledge on political prisoners, and knowledge, for the French philosopher Michel Foucault, is inseparable from power; the two produce each other. This application of naked power by the state perhaps made standing with Khalid and other political prisoners (especially Muslims) a risky proposition for the CJP.During the protest, Dipke, when ‘asked’ about Khalid, said, “If I were Khalid or a Muslim, I would be in jail by now.” The CJP leadership has been, hence, cognisant of their privilege as Hindus and the role of existing societal fault lines in dictating what kind of solidarity is possible.It is worth asking: Would Pradhan have resigned had the protest also carried Khalid’s name? Perhaps not, and some may view CJP’s narrow strategic calculation as the correct approach.One may similarly argue that had the CJP spoken about caste-based discrimination in educational spaces, they would have turned away a lot of middle-class Savarna youth who think reservation is “unnecessary” in today’s context. But then the bigger question is, can a movement built on seeking meaningful change and social justice self-limit itself and its agenda on what is easy to bargain from the state and the people?The answer seems to be a resounding no. For one, this approach risks reducing justice to opportunism, i .e., fighting a battle only when the victory is guaranteed. Two, it betrays the most vulnerable section in society in whose name the battles of social justice are often waged in the first place. And three, any change coming out of this approach is likely to be a cosmetic one as a movement that wins by carefully avoiding the state’s most vulnerable targets has not defeated the logic of that repression; it has simply learned to work around it.Also read: ‘I Must Acknowledge the Role of the Present Regime and its Foot Soldiers…’: Umar KhalidIn this case, yes, Pradhan is now gone, and his successor has taken charge. Pralhad Joshi, an RSS strongman, has now been entrusted with the responsibility of running the education system of India. Besides being associated with creating communal tensions in Karnataka, the new minister has also publicly defended the release of Bilkis Bano’s rapists.The resignation of an incompetent minister and his replacement with another ideologue is not sufficient for any structural or meaningful change. We live in a time when syllabi across universities and schools are rapidly being changed to peddle propaganda in favour of the saffron party. Government schools are shutting down and enrolment in private universities has skyrocketed. Even within public universities like JNU and Delhi University, the process of outsourcing of classes to private players has begun. Any pressure group built around education cannot afford to stay silent about the saffronisation and privatisation of education spaces today. CJP is yet to take a stand on these issues.Undoubtedly, the CJP has played a huge role in mobilising India’s youth and achieved a victory, that too a big one, by humbling the mighty Modi government. However, the fight is far from over, contrary to what these larger-than-life statements suggest. To borrow Gen Z lingo, CJP leaders need to “touch some grass” and water it without claiming ownership of the ground which existed before them and will continue doing so even after them.Harsh Mamnani is an independent researcher and reporter. He holds a Master’s degree in Political Science with a specialisation in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University.