The Politics Behind CJP’s Rise: Rahul Verma on Protest and Opposition

The early success of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests, according to Professor Rahul Verma, rested on two factors: the range of people they brought together and the government's inability to offer a counter-narrative to the concerns being raised. Speaking to The Edict, Verma, Associate Professor of Political Science at Shiv Nadar University and previously a faculty member at Ashoka University, discussed how the issue of examination irregularities brought together people across political affiliations, and what distinguished the subsequent mobilisation.

Verma identified the social composition of the protests as one of the reasons CJP gained traction. He described this as the “sociology of protest”, pointing to the participation of young students who supported the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), alongside their parents. The issue of examination irregularities resonated with people across political affiliations because education is widely regarded as a route to economic mobility, particularly in India. The possibility of that route being compromised gave the protests a broader support base. 

The government's response was another factor in the success of the student mobilization. Verma recalled that, after two to three weeks of demonstrations, an attempt by the state to disperse the gathering through force backfired and generated greater sympathy for the protesters. The government was eventually pushed to negotiate and conceded some of the protesters’ demands. On the government's response to the allegations surrounding examination irregularities, he said, “The government did not have a counter narrative to offer at that moment.”

Verma drew a distinction between these protests and the subsequent mobilisation around issues such as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and voter-roll deletions. The BJP's support base, he observed, was no longer involved in the same way, and the issues being raised had become more explicitly political. The government had also not conceded to the demands or shown a willingness to negotiate. Unlike during the initial protests, however, the BJP had a counter-narrative to offer in response to the issues being raised. “You and I may disagree on that counter narrative, but they have one narrative to offer,” Verma said. For him, the presence of a competing narrative matters in determining how a protest is received: a government's response is not limited to its actions, but also includes the way it explains and defends them. He emphasised the importance of narratives in political life, arguing that they shape how people understand and engage with political events.

Whether CJP can sustain its mobilisation beyond these protests remains to be seen. Verma emphasised that, despite the ‘party’ in its name, CJP is not yet a political party. “It's too early to make any judgments about where CJP might be heading,” he said.

The question of what CJP might become also brings up the relationship between a political organisation and the circumstances of its formation. Verma illustrated this through the Congress, which he described as a “catch-all” party. Its broad social base, he explained, was rooted in its origins in the freedom movement, when it sought to bring together different groups under a common political platform. Verma said that political parties carry the imprint of the conditions in which they are formed. As he put it, “political parties also carry birthmarks.” The Congress's origins helped establish its identity as an umbrella organisation, but that same identity can make it difficult for the party to redefine its constituency and political focus as circumstances change.

CJP, too, may have to contend with the political identity attached to its beginnings. Its emergence from student-led mobilisation and its association with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Verma suggested, could shape the constituencies it appeals to and how it is perceived by voters if it enters electoral politics. A movement built around a particular issue or social constituency may find it difficult to broaden its appeal when it becomes a political party. Its association with AAP could also make it harder to establish a distinct political identity. Verma, however, did not suggest that these constraints would be permanent.

The conversation also turned to Verma's 2023 article, The Exaggerated Death of Indian Democracy. He acknowledged constraints in India's electoral politics and institutions, as well as concerns surrounding minority rights and freedom of speech. However, he questioned whether frameworks of democratic theory developed largely through Western European experiences could be applied wholesale to India, calling for a more sustained discussion of democracy from a Global South perspective.

It is clear that CJP's early mobilisation brought together groups that did not necessarily share the same political affiliations. Whether it can retain that breadth of support, particularly as the issues around which it mobilises become more explicitly political, is a different question. For now, Verma cautions against drawing conclusions about the movement's future before it has taken shape.

(Edited by Gauri Deshpande and Anamta Husain)