Queering Dissent: Memes, Kinks and Demands for Accountability That Undid Modi’s Image

I have seen things my Delhi University-going millennial eyes simply can’t believe – explainer reels on BDSM, handcuffs and “Arrest Me Daddy” photos from Jantar Mantar and “cockroach” protests around the country. Writing eight weeks ago, I had been amused by the meme-driven engine powering the formation of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and wondering where it will go. I, along with billions of people, have been astonished by what they have achieved since: the first resignation of a Union minister in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led cabinet in their 12 years running the Union government, as a result of an on-the-ground mass popular movement.

How the movement outgrew memes

Much will be written, analysed and theorised about this historical moment in the coming days, including, I am certain, about the participation of women. There will be the necessary reminders and hard-won admiration toward leaders like Neha Bora, alongside CJP founder Abhijit Dipke, spokesperson Saurav Das and even youthful faces like spokesperson of the Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar (NCP-SP), Anish Gawande.

Bora, a PhD candidate at Jawaharlal Nehru University, current president of the All-India Students Association and a girl after my own heart – a college theatre artist – delivered, to my mind, the singular most impressive speech on July 20, after breaking her 23-day hunger strike alongside climate activist Sonam Wangchuk and two of her AISA comrades. She, like youth leaders before her, has an impressive recall of historical detail, beautiful bilingual poetry of language and just the right balance of fiery, righteous anger with unshakeable empathy, that makes her a natural leader. I say this with the highest admiration; I recognise figures like her and place in them my highest hopes for the progress of the nation.

I am here to write about something else though – a not-so-subtle and no less important shift in our political discourse because of Gen Z girls, non-binaries and others. They are fearless, foul-mouthed and do not give a flying f***. They, fundamentally and forever, have queered dissent.

Combining Instagram reel staples like make-up tips, skin care routines and GRWM (get ready with me) tropes, they have feminised “Dear Leaders” and burst the bubble of the strong man ethos. Gen Z, in front of our very eyes, meme by meme, is smashing the patriarchy.

Reimagining the chants

Take for instance two central chants of the Jantar Mantar protests – “chappan inch ka chhota bandar…” and “neem ka patta kadwa hai…” They both take aim at Narendra Modi, one by undoing the careful hagiography of a leader as virtuous child central to his being elected prime minister in 2014 and the other by making his vulture-capitalist ways of bargaining away the nation fundamental to exposing the exploitation of his government.

While there are many iterations of these now, the first videos I saw of these naye naare were led by women. You simply cannot tone-police them, bully them into respectability politics or enmesh them in civility discourse – strategies that for decades have been used to silence and undermine feminists as shrill, angry and crude. 

Whether Gen Z knows or has read Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Kimberley Crenshaw, Sara Ahmed or not (there is not zero chance that they have encountered some of their ideas at least on Instagram or, before it was banned in India, TikTok), they are fluent in the ideas of intersectionality, self-love, feminist killjoys and radical revolutionary joy.

Arundhati Roy went to Jantar Mantar, visited with Bora, wrote powerfully about the Cockroach Democracy, had her book Azadi read on stage and even she may or may not be a feminist role model to this generation. Their irreverence and suspicion of public figures is the point.

So when a reporter demurs by asking one female protester, “Gaali dena kya pradhan mantri ko, kya lagta hai aapko sahi hai? (Do you think cussing at the prime minister is correct?),” pat came the response, “Kab gaali diya?… To woh hain bhadwe, main to muh pe kehti hoon, chahe mujhe dande pe pade (What cuss word? He is a pimp, I say this to the face, even if I get beaten for it).” You simply cannot shame nor beat them into submission. The above exchange was posted on X by Priya Purohit with the caption, “She absolutely cooked the Modi Ecosystem/At this point no one can trust Modi anymore.”

In May, I wrote about the formation of the CJP puncturing the careful IT cell-manufactured, godi media-circulated image of Modi. Now we are irrevocably a step further – the idea of Modi as undefeatable and strong has been handily waylaid.

Kink as resistance

Gen Z has done this not just by subverting language, but also by flipping the very modalities of power. As Janelle Monae sang in ‘Screwed’:

“You fucked the world up now

We’ll fuck it all back down

Let’s get screwed

I, I don’t care

We’ll put water in your guns

We’ll do it all for fun

Let’s get let’s get screwed…

You know power is just sex

Now ask yourself who’s screwing you.”

Power “of” sex and “as” sex was repeatedly on display with signs like “Muth Maro, Students Nahi (beat your meat, not students),” “My Kink is Being a Meaningful Part of the Society,” “Only Real Baddies and Daddies Are Here,” “Police Daddy Hit me Harder,” and “Detain Me Daddy.”

In one of the many explainer videos of Gen Z slang and trends at Jantar Mantar, Shamita Yadav explained, “this generation is doomed, kinky. You really want to hurt them, tell them you love them, tell them you’re proud of them.”

If one of the lasting shames of the Modi government is the violence the Delhi Police unleashed on student protestors on July 20, including lathi charge, tear gas, water cannons and pellet guns, Gen Z queered violence by subsuming it into the world of kink – “Bad News for Delhi Police, We’re into BDSM,” and “Came Prepared This Time“ (while swinging leather handcuffs in front of a line on cops).  Young women in these protests repeatedly (self-) identified as “baddies.” Foucault would be proud.

Modi as the ‘bad boyfriend’

While state violence was queered into a framework of consensual, albeit risky, sexual preference, leaders were cast in the lexicon of online dating as “red flags” or “cheating exes”: “This Govt gave me more trust issues than my situationship,” “Cheating is Illegal unless its Systemic?,” “My crush and Modi both are heartless,” “Friends without benefits,” “We don’t need s*x bcz government keep f*cking us!,” “Biwi ke saath rahe hote to pata hota communication is key (If you had stayed with your wife you would know…),” “Gonna create a new sex position called ‘Modi’ where I’m at the top and do nothing,” “It’s giving dick-tator energy,” “My ex was a big liar; I saved her number by the name Modi,” “Dropping late night promises to fix everything. I have seen this red flag before, Don’t trust what men say after 12 am.”

Online commentators had undone the PR victory of Modi’s Melody for Meloni moment with the Italian prime minister, which currently has 14.4 million views on Instagram, by flocking to Giorgia Meloni’s social media accounts and calling Modi a bad husband/boyfriend in the comments section. More than one person walked around Jantar Mantar distributing melody candies to the crowds.

Feminising the ‘strongman’

On the one hand, there were images of Modi as the bad boyfriend and on the other there was a deliberate feminisation and homo-eroticisation of the images of Modi and Dharmendra Pradhan themselves.

Street artist Tyler’s stencil of a beaming Modi being kissed on his cheeks by Gautam Adani and Ambani became ubiquitous at protest sites, while Pradhan and Modi were often festooned in pink bows, long nails and exaggerated pouty lips and addressed as “kuchu puchu.”

While the regional BJP Jammu and Kashmir Instagram account posted “History Created Record-Breaking Reel PM Narendra Modi sets a global record for the most-viewed Instagram reel in 24 hours,” the comment section below the reel and internet memes about it were populated by content making tips including camera angle, skin care routine, dental care and potential cosmetic surgery analysis.

For Judith Butler, being critically queer is a way of orienting oneself away from heteronormative structures of power. The Jantar Mantar and nationwide CJP protests have made dissent queer by inverting the patriarchal signifiers that for so long gave Modi his power and made him and his government exist within a world of Gen Z memeification.

Or as a diva replied, when asked “Excuse me, what lip combo are you using?”: “You are going to outline your lips with spine and fill it in with courage, because that is what this government lacks.”

Shayoni Mitra is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Theatre, Barnard College.

This article went live on July twenty-eighth, two thousand twenty six, at eleven minutes past five in the evening.

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