“Kahin pyaar na ho jaye…India ki Gen Z sey eik request hai, ab bas! itna accha karoge toh main nafrat kaisey karoongi.”
Memes and reels are the medium through which the democratic josh and empathy of the youth protestors at Jantar Mantar are getting relayed across the world.
And it is through the same medium that Gen Z across one of the world’s most fiercely guarded borders are responding to the extraordinary scenes unfolding in Delhi.
Pakistanis are expressing their love, admiration and awe for the young protestors in the Indian capital, and sending their solidarity. Many are also rueing their own inability to take to the streets or form their own version of the Cockroach Janata Party against their own far more repressive government. “Hats off yar, hats off,” is how several of these reels end.
As unexpected as the protests in Delhi have been is the explosion of attention from across South Asia to what is happening in the Indian capital and across many other cities. In Sri Lanka, cartoonists are having a field day with the protests, an echo of their own four month long 2022 ‘aragalaya’ over the economic crisis in their country that led to the toppling of the Rajapaksa regime. A prominent activist and trade unionist shared the viral photo of a young girl in Mumbai stopping a police van from taking away her fellow protestors, commenting that it was a “different vibe”.
Buwanaka Perera, an Aragalaya activist, posted the following message “to my many Indian friends across the pond” as an Insta story on his page : “…the spark of the youth revolutions that was lit here at home, and spread across Asia, to which India seemed immune…yet after several years, to see the youth, and Indian citizens still believe in the India your founding fathers built, rally for what’s just and fair, bring tears of joy…after all never forget that you are the descendants of those who peacefully protested and managed to chase away the most powerful empire in human history…Our hearts ache to join you…from one youth protestor to another, keep going and never give up…with love from Sri Lanka. Inquilab Zindabad.”
From Nepal, where too Gen Z protests toppled a government last September, came some advice: “Number one, whatever you are feeling is valid, do not let anyone tell you that you are …overreacting; number two, do not get distracted, always remember what are goal is, speaking from experience, it is easy to lose sight of what you are fighting for once the fight begins…”
But the real flood of messages was from Pakistan, where a de facto military ruler has jailed the country’s most popular politician and repressed dissent with an iron hand. Pakistani instagrammers proclaimed they couldn’t take their eyes off what was happening at Jantar Mantar.
Instagrammer shanza.said.no said, “It was so easy to hate on each other, but now I’m becoming a fan…kya karoon iss mohabat ka jo ubhar ubhar key aa rahi hai? Where on earth are you finding the audacity? …mad respect guys, mad respect.”
Conspiracy theorists may read another meaning to the avalanche of social media praise for the Jantar Mantar protestors, but they would be missing the angst in most of them. “I can understand every sign, all the inside jokes, jo bhi aap bol rahe ho, despite all the hatred that has been spread. Aap Modi ko fascist bol rahe ho, mujhe koi aur nazar aata hai, aapke student pithe hain, hamare student ko utha lete hain,” said Bilal Hussain.
Another spoke of how in India, if opposition leaders were picked up at a protest, they would be released soon after. But in Pakistan, “they are tortured so much that they never speak up again, or they are never released. We all know who I’m talking about,” the Instagrammer said, the reference to Imran Khan’s incarceration hardly disguised.
A post by Instagrammer zai_aurangzib reflected on why Pakistan’s Gen Z could not organise itself in the same way, recalling that students’ unions had been destroyed by General Zia ul Haq in the 1980s. “Pakistani Gen Z is alo desperate for change. But our system is different. We live under a military dictatorship, not genuine civilian rule. There is a fundamental difference…Posting this because I’m tired of ignorant people blaming Pakistani youth and students,” she posted, saying: “...ask the right questions. Read history.”
Many said had it not been for the border, they would have been at Jantar Mantar by now. To which came the sardonic post by @tarikhwala: “Freedom is not something governments hand out. People take it, slowly, at a cost, over decades…No quom has ever waited their way out of this”. Calling out the “hypocrisy” of Pakistanis saying it was the border preventing them from showing up in Delhi to stand with the protestors, he pointed to the 16-year-long missing persons protest outside the Quetta press club, people protesting in Azad Kashmir, where “we Pakistanis go every summer vacation”, and a protest by the blind in Karachi demanding jobs under a quota for the disabled. “What border is stopping us from joining these protests,” he asked.
From 2022, as South Asia’s most populous country, but with a youth bulge in common with all the others, India watched the Gen Z protests overthrow regimes around it by turn – Sri Lanka first, Bangladesh next, then Nepal. Many thought India’s youth too docile, too content or too aligned with the governing party and its Hindu nationalist agenda.
The rise of the Cockroach Janta Party from the insulting words hurled at unemployed young people by the country’s chief justice, the cross country solidarity that the CJP garnered in a short time, the massive response to its call for a protest against India’s broken education system, and to demand the resignation of the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, appear to have evoked both surprise and admiration from youth across South Asia. Most of all, the anger of the region’s largest Gen Z and the brutal treatment meted out to them by the government have caused an outpouring of fellow-feeling across borders, unthinkable just a few weeks ago, given India’s reputation as the region’s “big brother”.
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