‘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 languageThe cockroaches, as is their wont, greedily nibbled at the word and wove it to name their new party, the Cockroach Janta Party. The sudden popularity of this name indicated that the ponderous version of Hindi as Rashtra Bhasha (national language) – being pushed by Boomers and Millennials as a pure and ‘civilised’ standard Hindi – had been evaporating for a while and being replaced by Insta Speak of Gen Z. A Rashtra Bhasha dying actually means it is gone. But the new patois version of Hindi is, in the words of the Bhagavad Gita, Hindi discarding its old shape like a dirty frayed garment to put on a fresh one. Frankly, the vitality Hindi once derived from its native speakers in the Hindi belt has been considerably depleted by the last ten years of the ugly politicisation of standard Hindi used by political parties and their supremos.Even as the language for cross generational intercourse within large families’ old style ghar ki Hindustani, like maa ke hath ka khana (food from the mother’s hand), is largely a myth, sentimentalised by pot-bellied men on WhatsApp groups. That version no longer appeals to the Gen Z because their own parents, even if they are right-wing supporters and cabinet ministers, see to it that their own progeny attend English medium schools and graduate from American or British universities of renown. Gen Z moreover is a generation that has grown in cities and has had little or no truck with the dialects their parents heard or spoke: Braj, Awadhi, Maithili, Bhojpuri. Within the home, inter-generational parent-child speak has atrophied with tutorials, homework and all scrolling compulsively on smart phones or laptops rest of the time. At school, there is now a copious use of the internet in teaching and even homework is being sent to students online. Most government schools have fewer teachers and enormous numbers of students in each class. So old-style class room interactions are near impossible. As they scroll through exciting content or send emojis to their peer group, students mostly use the new patois with some variants of local dialects flecking their speech. And that kind of freewheeling communication – often between unknown individuals, not the language – is what shapes their abbreviations, memes and terms like clocking it, cool or delulu. When aging, balding Boomers or Millennials try to connect with this mysterious world of cockroaches after their undeniable show of their superior powers of mass communication, they sound strangely comic and underscore the generational linguistic divide in the voter-rich Hindi belt. The young cockroaches are not trying to ‘preserve’ the standardised (Manak) Hindi whose birthday is celebrated with great fanfare by governmental offices in September each year. Let’s face it. Manak Hindi was a chimera hastily crafted by four Munshis in the Fort William College. They were appointed by the British, who realised after the sudden eruption of the mutiny in 1857 that they needed to build a linguistic bridge with the natives as soon as possible. That version, polished by Rashtra Bhasha Adhikaris and Hindi departments in universities mostly shaped this Rashtra Bhasha. That version is notable, our popular writers from Bhartendu to Rahi Masoom Raza, Shrilal Shukla and Shrikant Verma have all mocked as artificial and moved away from. They would have applauded the latest twist in the long story of native languages in the Hindi belt. It is a result of steady migrations, break up of large joint families into nuclear units in cities, and an ugly divisive politics . Notably, this is a worldwide phenomena in all nations with large migrant populations from the US to India. They are all now seeing groups of highly energetic young voters armed with digital literacy attracting both new voters and the market forces of capitalism. The forces that have produced a Mamdani have also produced a Dipke.Mind you, when language changes, the legacy of the older, wiser part remains in use. And it continues to inform all age groups through racial and institutional memories that shaped those nations. The substratum in the Instagram stories, if you will patiently sift through them, reveals this. Both the new internationally shared algos and genetics spell out a story of hope. They do not seek chaos but assure us that the young are helping us all evolve with less violent and wasteful ways of surviving in a world facing enormous environmental and socio-political changes. The new media ecologyUltimately, the new media ecology in any country, including ours, will depend on two things. One, the new devices and technical platforms on offer. And two, on the entire socio-political structure of a nation with a vast and growing numbers of young job aspirants and voters interacting with the institutions of the state that controls the new digitized pathways for communication and interaction. Part of the significance of all this is how it has handed our officially young the opportunity (after centuries maybe) to insist on an ethical moral principle against dictatorial rule. The equality of all citizens can not be a self-evident truth in a caste and gender divided majoritarian India ruled by politicians aged 70 and above. India and its society were often split along many lines while grappling with a new religion and its big empirical ambitions. Here, the heretical sects came to play an important role for harbouring the poor and uncared for as human beings – Guru Gorakhnath Kabir, Dadu, Raidas and Guru Nanak. During another period of change around the 18th-19th century, political power in the centre was in decline and the kites and carrion pickers from Europe were hovering overhead. It gave us the timeless verses of Mir of Delhi that cut through the Urdu divide to fit in his view of the world around him. “Bura kya maaniye ab chhed se ya uski gaali se/Yehi hai taur uska saath apne khurd-e -saali se.” (Do not be offended if the poet teases or abuses you, that’s just his way of acknowledging his times.)Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.