The sewer has officially overflowed. Barely had the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) recovered from its grand Delhi adventure – a revolution that promised lakhs but delivered hundreds – when a challenger emerged from the drains of public discourse.
Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju has announced the formation of the Ishq Karo Party, whose noble mission is summed up in four words: Make Love Not War.
At this rate, India may soon have enough parties to ensure every citizen can become a party president without troubling himself to find any voters.
From cockroaches to cupids
Until recently, political satire writers had to invent absurd scenarios. Now reality is doing the heavy lifting.
The CJP burst onto social media promising a new political dawn. Millions followed, Reels went viral, and slogans echoed. The Constitution was brandished like a sacred relic. The leader arrived in Delhi as though a mass uprising was about to commence.
Then came Jantar Mantar. The online army that looked capable of storming Parliament struggled to fill a modest protest venue.
The much-advertised ‘people’s movement’ ended up resembling a family gathering where several relatives had cancelled at the last minute. One suspected the cockroaches had discovered daylight.
Revolution through Instagram
Every failed movement creates a market opportunity. The moment the CJP exposed itself as a directionless social-media spectacle, imitators, competitors, and parodists sensed an opening.
Justice Katju has merely become the first to recognise the gap in the market. If one party can promise revolution through Instagram, why should another not promise world peace through romance?
The CJP’s founding philosophy appears to be ‘protest first, purpose later’. The Ishq Karo Party seems to have adopted the equally profound doctrine of ‘love first, details later’.
One cannot accuse either side of being burdened by excessive ideological complexity.
The great party boom
The CJP may eventually be remembered not for changing Indian politics but for lowering the entry barriers to it. Why spend decades building a cadre when a viral Reel will do Why formulate policy when slogans generate better engagement? Why organise workers when followers can be counted by the million? The logic is irresistible.
Justice Katju even offered Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra to join his new party. As per Katju, the ‘Ishq Karo Party’, will be a ‘very serious endeavour to deal with the huge problems facing India.’
Today, there is an Ishq Karo Party. Tomorrow there may be a Selfie Karo Party, a Like Karo Party, a Forward Karo Party, and perhaps a Comment Section Liberation Front.
Each will have a logo, a social media handle, a manifesto written on the back of a napkin, and a founder convinced he is the next national saviour.
The Jantar Mantar effect
The irony is that the Delhi fiasco was supposed to establish the CJP as a serious political force. Instead, it achieved the opposite. The event demonstrated the vast difference between clicking a heart icon and boarding a train.
Social media followers are not cadres. Views are not votes. Virality is not viability. The CJP learned that lesson the hard way at Jantar Mantar.
Justice Katju appears to have learned a different lesson altogether: if a movement with millions of followers can attract only a few hundred people, one might as well launch another movement and join the fun.
Love, war, and political theatre
To be fair, ‘Make Love Not War’ is a more pleasant slogan than most heard in Indian politics. The problem is that slogans alone do not create political movements.
The CJP discovered that reality has a habit of demanding organisation, leadership, purpose and hard work. Those are far less glamorous than hashtags.
As the Ishq Karo Party prepares its website and Instagram account, and the CJP recovers from its Delhi reality check, the rest of the country can watch this fascinating new genre unfold.
