The singing, dancing and sheer joy in the face of police brutality at the protests led by the Cockroach Janta party show people no longer fear India’s regime

In July, as supporters of the Cockroach movement took to Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in Delhi, incensed over exam-paper leaks and demanding the resignation of India’s education minister, the rest of the nation realised that for the first time since the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) came to power in 2014, the curse of inertia and the grip of fear had been smashed irrevocably. Prime minister Narendra Modi’s image of invincibility has been punctured.

People in India have been conditioned to believe in an idea of intense slow-burn protests that eventually bring change – but the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) has shown us that the revolution can be fast-tracked.

Meena Kandasamy is a poet and writer based in Chennai