Arundhati Roy Says India's 'Cockroach' Protests Have Shattered Modi's Carefully Built Image

Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy has said that the youth-driven protest movement behind India's satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has dismantled Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meticulously crafted public persona, calling it a turning point in the country's political life.

Speaking to Al Jazeera's Imran Khan in an interview aired on October 6, 2026, Roy said she senses something shifting beneath India's surface. "I do feel that something is boiling just under the surface. Something is going to happen," she said. "The emperor has been called out, and he has lost his power."

The movement began as a grassroots reaction after protesters were dismissed with the insult "cockroach." Rather than reject the label, young activists adopted it as a badge of defiance and humor, building a movement that Roy credits with puncturing the prime minister's aura of invincibility.

Roy, 64, whose debut novel The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize, has since built a reputation as one of India's most outspoken political writers. She described the CJP's use of Instagram reels and other new media as an irreverent yet serious form of political messaging that has stripped away the image Modi spent years constructing.

Contrary to the suggestion that Modi's government simply failed to grasp social media or youth culture, Roy argued that the BJP was in fact the first major political force to embrace those platforms. In her view, the movement succeeded not because of a single miscalculation but because multiple grievances converged at once, making the protests "the straw that broke the camel's back."

She pointed to a string of accumulating controversies: Modi's failure to secure a full parliamentary majority in the 2024 election, election-related scandals, leaked examination papers, and widespread unemployment. Together, she said, these pressures produced what she called an irreverent but serious explosion led largely by Generation Z.

Roy also indicated that the cockroach movement is not finished. She said the CJP is planning protests across India in the coming days in response to a newspaper investigation that has exposed fresh evidence about the integrity of the country's elections. While Roy and others have raised concerns about electoral manipulation for years, she described the latest disclosures as concrete proof of what critics had long alleged.

Beyond the protests, Roy offered a bleak assessment of modern India. She described it as a nation that is extraordinarily wealthy yet home to vast numbers of deeply impoverished citizens living in humiliating conditions. Boasting about superpower status, she said, is a scandal when so many people remain disempowered.

The author said the country's immense wealth is concentrated among a small elite of industrialists who control much of the economy, with little of that prosperity reaching ordinary Indians. Calling India a superpower or an economic force, she argued, ignores the reality facing the poor.

Roy rejected the once-common explanation that colonial rule alone accounts for India's problems. She acknowledged the argument had merit at one time but said the current government is now making conditions worse, including by eroding fundamental freedoms.

She recalled speaking with young people a day earlier and noted that ideas once expressed by Mahatma Gandhi, Bhimrao Ambedkar, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Jawaharlal Nehru during British rule could not be voiced today without risking imprisonment. Students, activists and lawyers, she said, are constantly moving in and out of jail, and many face the threat of antiterrorism laws.

Roy also cited Modi's Independence Day address from the Red Fort, in which he described "dimaghi Naxal" — a term meaning "intellectual Maoists" — as among the most dangerous elements in the country. She presented the remark as evidence of official hostility toward dissent.

The interview also touched on Roy's identity as a writer. She declined to categorize herself as a novelist, essayist or political activist, saying labels are better left to others. She added that she does not see a clear line between the personal and the public, and that even a fairy tale can carry political meaning without becoming propaganda.

That outlook helps explain why Roy remains a lightning rod in India. Her willingness to confront the government in her fiction and essays has made her a hero to supporters and a target for critics, yet she continues to write in her own voice. As she put it, refusing to write what moves her would amount to putting herself in prison.

With the CJP vowing nationwide demonstrations and election-integrity claims gaining new evidence, Roy's comments frame India's Gen Z protests as more than a passing wave of online satire. She sees them as part of a broader "million mutinies" chipping away at the prime minister's image — and as a sign that the political climate in the world's most populous democracy may be ready to change.