India’s Education Minister has resigned after 36 days of continuous protests by Cockroach Janta Party-led people. A new youth-led political movement, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), has emerged in India. The group is currently protesting repeated examination paper leaks and demanding accountability for what it calls systemic failures in the country's education system.
Specifically, the CJP is calling for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Delhi's Jantar Mantar became the focal point of the CJP protests over the past month. However, the demonstrations took a chaotic turn when protesters decided to march toward the Indian Parliament.
Delhi Police responded by erecting barricades, firing tear gas, and baton-charging the crowd. The government also shut down internet services in the area. Tragically, young girls and boys were beaten, prompting opposition leader Rahul Gandhi to demand Prime Minister Narendra Modi's resignation.
Gandhi himself was dragged by the police, taken into custody, and detained before eventually being released. Should the Indian government's response to the Cockroach Movement be considered an act of securitisation? According to the Copenhagen School of International Relations, securitisation is the process by which political actors frame a politicised issue as an existential threat.
This shifts the issue from normal politics into the realm of emergency measures, justifying extraordinary responses. Is the BJP government justifying its actions under this exact pretext? Such a response contradicts democratic expectations; while securitisation can occur in any political system, it typically faces greater institutional constraints in established liberal democracies than in hybrid or authoritarian systems where the boundary between civilian and security authority is blurred.
Modi's BJP government has a history of relying on securitising narratives. This pattern was evident during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the farmers' movements, and the response in Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370. In each instance, the government framed political disagreements not simply as dissent, but as existential threats to national unity and sovereignty.
Summary from source