‘Daddy, detain me’: The memes that humbled Modi

The Cockroach Janta Party was born as an Instagram page on May 16, when Abhijeet Dipke asked unemployed young people of the country, who the Chief Justice of India had dubbed “cockroaches”, to come together.

Its mascot was an AI-generated cockroach in sunglasses.

From that moment on, tens of thousands of young people rallied behind what was, in essence, an AI-slop Instagram page, and joined protests across the country.

The movement intensified after activist Sonam Wangchuk was forcibly removed from Jantar Mantar on the 21st day of his hunger strike, and when the police cracked down on their march towards Parliament with lathi charges, tear gas and pellet guns.

The young protestors responded to the violence – with memes and irreverence.

This was not a movement trying to imitate the student politics of the 1990s. It spoke the language of the internet because that was where much of its constituency already lived.

And so began the meme offensive.

Subway Surfers or lathi charge?

Take the “Everybody knows that I'm a good girl, officer” trend. The audio comes from Playing Dangerous, an unreleased 2012 Lana Del Rey song in which she playfully insists on her innocence to a police officer. Online, creators usually lip-sync the lyrics beside bewildered police officers or security guards. Protesters filmed themselves mouthing the lyrics while facing rows of police officers.

The humour only became darker after reports of lathi charges. Graffiti sprayed across Delhi Police barricades declaring “We ❤️ BDSM” borrowed the acronym for bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism – an umbrella term for consensual sexual practices centred on power exchange, restraint and role-play. The joke lay in pretending that protesters welcomed the violence being inflicted on them.

Others leaned into the same irony with placards reading, “detain me, daddy”.

The point was never that the beatings were funny. It was that even the state’s harshest response could be stripped of the fear it was meant to inspire.

The jokes continued after tear gas was fired. Protesters quipped that it was “0% ethanol”, riffing on the government’s ethanol-blending campaign. Others uploaded Strava screenshots proudly recording the kilometres they had run while escaping lathi charges, turning a frantic sprint into a fitness achievement.

One young protester compared the experience to a real-life version of Subway Surfers, the endless-running mobile game where players dodge obstacles while fleeing pursuit.

The same irreverence extended to the protest signs.

One poster featured a yassified Modi – a meme format that digitally glamorises someone with flawless skin, dramatic make-up and impossibly long nails. It borrowed from the internet “diva” culture, joking that the prime minister was too busy serving looks to hear the protesters.

Sonam, it’s done bro

Another borrowed the format of Dora the Explorer. In the cartoon, Dora asks viewers whether they can see things that are blatantly obvious. The parody asked, “Can you find the democracy, mitron?”

The internet’s turnaround was relentless. Even the prime minister appeared to try his hand at the language of the moment. Instead of the familiar televised address, Modi released a midnight vertical video shot on a front-facing camera, the visual grammar of influencers.

But this did little to stop the memes. By morning, protesters had already transformed a screenshot from the video into a viral joke, comparing the frame to the “Sir... loondry!” scene from the movie Delhi Belly. The humour had little to do with the original dialogue, it was the visual resemblance that mattered.

Then came Bollywood actor Salman Khan.

The actor initially criticised the police action on July 20, and called the protesters peaceful and courageous. Less than a day later, however, he urged them to return home after Modi’s intervention, ending his post with the line: “Sonam, it’s done, bro”.

Gen Z wasted no time. When Khan appeared to change his tune, protesters answered with placards reading, “Salman, it’s not done, bro”. And when Dharmendra Pradhan eventually resigned, the slogan was recycled one final time. This time the signs declared: “Pradhan, it’s done, bro”.

The protests also looked unlike any conventional one.

A young woman dressed as a bride carried a sign pleading, “Kuchu Puchu, ab toh resign kar do”, hijacking a viral baby-talk AI meme to demand the education minister’s resignation.

Others filmed the “Who was interested first?” relationship trend while standing in front of lines of security personnel instead of romantic partners.

Even the internet’s favourite dancing gorillas – recently ubiquitous at Indian weddings – made an appearance, alongside protesters dressed as MK Gandhi and a parade of pop-culture characters, from Marvel and DC superheroes like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk and Batman to Tatya Vinchu, the possessed puppet from the Marathi comedy-horror film Zapatlela.

This wasn’t simply a protest that happened to produce memes. It was a protest organised and remembered through them.