Gen Z Did What We Couldn’t: A Love Letter to the Fearless Generation

Dear Protest Core Gen,I’m addicted. I can’t stop watching you rhyme "Narender" with bandar, escaping from police vans, giggling at cops who threaten you, and taking selfies with grim paramilitary troops/police ‘uncles’ as you ask them if you can get a 'Hiyyaaa'. You make it look so easy. Even the fiercest critics of my generation didn’t drop the ‘ji’ when parodying Prime Minister Narendra Modi. You’re repurposing barricades to play badminton, football, cricket and rain dancing under water canons. You’ve reinvented pop symbols to work for your protest. If your contemporaries in Bangladesh used graffiti and those in Madagascar were inspired by Japanese manga, you’re mocking police fitness levels with Subway Surfers and the vocabulary of your generation.Backing all these playful images is the clear, brave voice of what is now India’s most fiercely dissenting generation. Yes, you clearly have a spine, as you have shown us in countless reels.You made many jokes about the Delhi Police violence and one young woman helped me understand the subtext. Her reel alerting the capital’s police that she’s coming to town and that she’s into BDSM was funny until I read the caption: ‘You can’t beat me any more than my father does.’ As the youngest generation trapped in the violence of the Great Indian Family, you’ve suffered too.'Darr Chala Gaya': PM Modi is Losing His Teflon, No Going Back from HereYou’ve taken Sansa Stark’s 2024 ‘Uncle, please sit’ line to Super Mario 1-1 level. This movement is you speaking up, not just about the failed education system but about how everyone around you thinks you shouldn’t have an opinion or right about who you love, what you eat, what you dream of becoming and how you live your life. Thank you for sharing stories of supportive parents too. It’s good to see that at least some of us did right by you.Your Instagram feed these past few years has been brimming with the consequences of brutal actions by the hateful old men who run the world. You’ve seen young artists and first responders from many countries fight back with poetry, pictures, and courage. Little did the ‘experts’ who kept describing you as the most apathetic and apolitical generation know that all this was impacting you deeply.Now you’re asserting a new place for yourself even as the patriarchs who are used to telling you what to do fuss and fume, “Look at the audacity of these CHILDREN. How dare they tell us what to do?" For me, this is the audacity of hope. And you’re not children, you’re the generation this country will be handed to. My heart is full of love for you. You’ve performed a miracle—but to understand why, you would have to know what you’re pulling us out of. A dozen years of relentless Islamophobia, hate, bulldozers, displacement, anti-love, anti-personal freedom policies had made me incapable of feeling anything except resignation, fatigue and the lingering sadness that, at least in my lifetime, we would remain deeply divided.Why So Many Different Indias Suddenly Found Each Other at Jantar MantarWhatever happens next, know this. We will always be grateful you used your wisdom, wit and cellphones to snap this country out of its collective PTSD, one joyful, viral reel at a time. You refuted a government that has built a system of virulent disinformation, with a few clicks of your thumb and finger, and magically turned the hateful algorithm on its head to reclaim our right to breathe easy. Your bravery is contagious, intoxicating—we’re all inhaling the air deeply. I hope the warmth and love of your fire spreads through this country. I pray your courage liberates the generations who came before you and the ones that follow.Your absence of fear is breathtaking. I’m tired of the timidity of my generation that looks the other way and declares they have stopped tracking the news because they can’t handle the ‘negativity’.They don’t speak up because office policies don’t allow it or because those around them are bigoted or because they don’t want to get overly involved, or because they want to ensure their privilege remains unscathed by the pain and injustice around them. “No politics please,” we say as we look away from injustice and shiver when someone requests our solidarity. Your overwhelming coming together in the heart of the capital is a huge middle finger to a country that practises dividing and ghettoising its citizens every day. I hope you make lots of new friends with Indians you may never have met otherwise. They will teach you more than any exam possibly can. This is your political awakening, a historic moment that none of us will ever forget. My generation may have relinquished our power as citizens, but overnight, you have claimed yours. 'Mumbai Police Detained Me Even Before the Protest, Then Showed Up at My Home'Speaking up has a cost, and many of you have already found that out. The crackdown has begun and, predictably, it is skewed. I saw many interfaith selfies with Muhammad Junaid, who has been at the protest distributing free food and water. Now he says the police have raided his home and are harassing his family members. I’m counting on you to support those who will be targeted because of their religion or caste. Even as Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, the government had detained some 3,000 Kashmiris for the murder of a policeman. I want to say be careful, you already know the dangerous playbook that has been used on dissenters repeatedly. But that would make me like one of those parents on the playground, always anxious that their children are running too fast, climbing too high, swinging too dangerously. Hurtle into the void.(The author is the founder of India Love Project and on the editorial board of Article 14. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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Gen Z Did What We Couldn’t: A Love Letter to a Fearless Generation

This is your political awakening, Gen Z. A historic moment that none of us will ever forget, writes Priya Ramani.

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Topics: Jantar Mantar Student protests Gen-Z