https://thewire.in/politics/in-defence-of-the-profanity-of-protesters
On July 24, Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as Union education minister – the first such casualty a citizens’ movement has extracted from Narendra Modi’s government in more than a decade in power. It is worth asking why this movement, of all the movements this government has faced down and outlasted, actually worked. Part of the answer lies in something India’s commentariat has been strangely reluctant to say out loud: the “Cockroaches” won partly because they were rude.
Every generation invents its own tongue, and Gen Z’s happens to be foul-mouthed, sarcastic, and entirely uninterested in asking permission to speak that way. The posters at Jantar Mantar, the Instagram reels, the placards outside the education minister’s residence did not read like the earnest, morally solemn banners of an older Indian protest tradition.
They read like group chats – abusive, vulgar, absurd, gleefully profane – and this offended precisely the people it was designed to offend: the self-styled sanskari faithful of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ecosystem, and the Bhakts for whom reverence toward the leader is close to a civic religion. That offence was not a design flaw. It was the whole point, and it deserves to be recognised as one of the reasons this movement won – because vulgarity, deployed with intent against sacred power, has a much older and much more successful political career than most respectable commentary is willing to admit.
by Anand Teltumbde
30/07/2026