PM Narendra Modi’s late-night social media peace offering [to the protesting students] clearly wrongfooted the political arthropods. Belying the line put out by opponents that he never spoke without a script or teleprompter, he exhorted the youth in short, simple sentences in a video reel to abjure differences, avoid acting based on anger or misinformation, and focus on education, innovation and building a united India. – Reshmi Dasgupta
It was all going rather well for the Cockroach Janta Party for the last few weeks: it had captured the zeitgeist, at least in New Delhi, as the BJP government at the Centre seemed to be misunderstanding and underestimating India’s youth. The narrative had been cleverly skewed and disseminated to portray an unresponsive and callous government. Opportunistic political parties also jumped on to the bandwagon, sensing and hoping for a chance to beat back the BJP/NDA.
That narrative had totally blocked out the fact that the central government had actually taken all the necessary action. The culprits behind the NEET leak had been identified, arrested and face the full force of the law, complicit officials in the exam authority had been chopped, charged, and changed. The exam was conducted again without any more glitches, and the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill 2026 was passed with lightning speed.
Meanwhile, protesters at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar area continued their agitation for the education minister to quit, as if that were the only solution to the problem of leaks and bribery in exams across India. And the minister’s continuance in office was successfully posited as conclusive evidence that nothing was done to remedy the situation. The 26-day Sonam Wangchuk fast then provided more grist for the roach mill, as he even beat Mahatma Gandhi’s 1924 record by five days.
The agitating youth—loosely called Gen Z—also found not only many gushing admirers among the commentariat (especially those whose firsthand interactions with that cohort had been minimal before the cockroach agitation) but also guilt-stricken members of the parents-grandparents demographic. And all of them turned on the central government and ruling party as the cause of all their feelings of frustration, anger and guilt, with social media being a ready amplifier.
So extreme bad behaviour was excused, obscenities and expletives were justified, taunting and injuring police were lauded, and personal attacks were rationalised. It was a collective loss of common sense and civility. But then, surprisingly, the expected Nepal or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka-type “nationwide student uprising” did not happen. And the Prime Minister put the ultimate spanner in the works—by declaring that those belligerent youth need forgiveness, not anger.
His sudden late-night social media peace offering clearly wrongfooted the political arthropods. Belying the line put out by opponents that he never spoke without a script or teleprompter, he exhorted the youth in short, simple sentences in a video reel to abjure differences, avoid acting based on anger or misinformation, and focus on education, innovation and building a united India. He did not sound like what they had been told he was: a brutal, merciless and anti-youth PM.
Police indeed retaliated in kind a few times when prodded and verbally abused by protesters in 2026. But there had been no replay of the lathi charges, water cannon and tear gassing of Nirbhaya gang-rape protesters at New Delhi in December 2012. Yet the then UPA government of Dr Manmohan Singh had not been branded as cruel and undemocratic unlike the NDA government in July 2026. The UPA was just mildly described as “tone-deaf and, at times, incompetent”.
Also, while that PM in 2012 was like a deer in the headlights—transfixed when confronted by imminent catastrophe—this PM acted when he saw that even his government’s earnest and prompt efforts were being blacked out by the concerted machinations of many players, not all of them in public view. He again did what he is known—and feared by his political opponents—for: communicating directly with India’s youth, that too on their preferred social media platform.
Worse still, another much-vilified bogeyman reached out to the youth too. The walrus-moustached Sarsanghchalak of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, Mohan Bhagwat, responding to 2,000 Gen Z and Gen Alpha students at the anniversary of a youth-orientated NGO in Mumbai on Thursday, declared that such protests are a part of democracy and called for dialogue, not dismissal. It was absolutely the worst thing he could say—for those benefiting from discord, that is.
Indeed, by drawing the RSS supremo out to the front line, the protest leadership inadvertently handed him the very audience that had so far been indoctrinated to regard him as a regressive monster who must be shunned and abused. And the youth got to hear his sensible stance on many issues, particularly those on which he had been painted as an implacable opponent and hater, such as about the LGBT community. The audience then realised he does not have saffron horns.
Carried on all social media platforms, millions of all ages have now heard the leader of the RSS—the ideological fount of the BJP—clearly accepting same-sex couples. Bhagwat’s rationale that laws cannot change social attitudes and so society has to change before laws do was eminently logical. He even proffered the very pragmatic stopgap solution of a law to legalise same-sex couples living together instead of changing traditional marriage structures just yet.
Bhagwat’s view on several “modern” western nations banning social media for the young also surprised many, given that the RSS is overwhelmingly portrayed by “liberal” media and political commentators as fuddy-duddy and autocratic. He said restriction was not the answer. “If you ban something, it simply moves to the black market and spreads even more. The entire society has to respond to this challenge together. Only then will the government’s efforts succeed.”
Generations weaned on misinformation about the RSS—including those older than Gen Z and Millennials—must not have believed their ears initially. Had they not seen the man himself articulate these thoughts live on stage they may have believed counter-narratives that it was all fake news. That he was a regressive, misogynistic homophobe, like the rest of his ideological ilk. Now when those adjectives are trotted out again, they will recognise the false flag agenda. – News18, 7 August 2026
› Reshmi Dasgupta is a freelance writer in New Delhi.
Filed under: india | Tagged: dialogue, gen z, mohan bhagwat, narendra modi, student protesters | Comments Off on How Modi and Bhagwat wrongfooted the political arthropods – Reshmi Dasgupta
