Indian police have used pellet guns, tear gas and baton charges against tens of thousands of student demonstrators in New Delhi, injuring more than 100 people in one of the largest anti-government protests the Indian capital has seen in recent years. Videos circulating online appear to show officers deploying increasingly violent methods to suppress the march, which drew supporters of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement whose name embraces the insult as a badge of defiance.

The CJP emerged from protests over exam irregularities — including alleged paper leaks and recruitment scandals — and has evolved into a broader campaign for government accountability. Demonstrators were marching toward parliament demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan when police moved in. Pradhan has refused to step down, accusing opposition parties of exploiting students for political ends. Authorities also suspended mobile internet in the area around the protest site during the crackdown, though access was later restored.

While police confirmed that several officers were also injured in the clashes, protesters described scores of demonstrators being beaten. The day unfolded in ways that illustrate a generational shift in how young people experience and document political action. Many protesters filmed the events in real time, posting outfit reveals and sardonic "reviews" of tear gas alongside raw footage of fleeing crowds — a stream of memes, reels and first-person dispatches that flooded Instagram once internet access returned. One young woman calmly reapplied lipstick in front of a line of riot officers; another joked she was "serving face at the protest because the government couldn't serve justice."

Experts say the humour is not frivolity but a coping mechanism and a form of political communication. "Politics is everyday, emotional and experiential," said Nishant Shah, director of the Digital Narratives Center at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Joyojeet Pal, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies technology and society, noted that younger generations "grow up with politics alongside their memes, their family pictures and their daily commutes."

The protests sit within a longer tradition of Indian student and civil-society movements, from the farmers' tractor rallies that gridlocked Delhi's borders to the anti-citizenship-law protests marked by murals and public readings of the constitution. What distinguishes this moment is scale and medium: smartphones have made every participant a potential chronicler. For many of those who marched on Monday, the act of recording was itself a form of resistance — a way, as one digital anthropologist put it, of saying: "This happened. We were there. We will remember."