On 15th May 2026, the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Justice Surya Kant, called unemployed people, youth, activists, and journalists as “cockroaches” and “parasites.” This reveals a deep-seated bias in Indian society, where ‘Niti’ (principles and processes) and ‘Nyaya’ (justice) operate separately to uphold class bias against the poor and unemployed, as well as caste bias against lower-caste people within the Brahminical social, political, economic, cultural, and religious order of India. The road of Niti can’t be separated from its destination that is Nyaya. Any division or separation between Niti and Nyaya exposes the insidious nature of the judiciary and society in India today.
The CJI has since clarified his remarks, but this appears to be an out-of-context escape route. While there is a context to every perception and bias, there is no place for such bias in a judicial system. These biases within the insidious Indian judicial system and the biased perceptions of justices reflect existing biases within Indian society. This culture of bias, rooted in perception, destroys the very foundation of an empiricist, constitutional, federal judicial system, where justice is denied. Perception destroys the empiricist and evidence-based judicial system in India. Perception and propaganda shapes and predetermines conditions for the delivery of justice.
Such a predetermined process of destruction and denial of justice for the poor, unemployed, youth, women, and lower-caste people has been further aggravated by the rise of marketisation of law and commercialisation of justice. If one can afford a good and expensive lawyer, then one can afford to access justice and the judicial system. Thus, the economic ability of an individual determines the nature of availability and accessibility to justice and the judicial system. Such a system has fundamentally institutionalised the class foundation of the judicial system, which upholds the interests of the rich in the name of delivering justice.
Such an insidious and narrow capitalist culture of productivism and employability locates people in terms of their economic relevance and irrelevance. Economic output and employment define success in both feudal and capitalist society, producing a compliant mind like Chief Justice Surya Kant—someone who lacks the critical analytical power to understand and analyse how he himself is a victim of caste-, class-, and gender-biased capitalist ideology and its culture of perception. This undermines Chief Justice Surya Kant’s ability to deliver justice by breaking himself free from such shackles of capitalism. By calling the youth of India “cockroaches” and “parasites,” he not only undermines the judicial system but also undermines his own constitutional and judicial position, and diminishes himself as a person of reason. Many lawyers, justices, and other members of the legal fraternity are victims of such feudal andcapitalist consciousness. The only way to escape such reactionary consciousness is to return to classrooms, libraries, and streets—to learn, reflect, and reclaim the collective foundation and emancipatory logic of justice—in order to create a dynamic judicial system that delivers justice to all without any form of bias or discrimination based on perceptions.
A 2020 study titled “Personality variation improves collective decision-making in cockroaches” by Isaac Planas-Sitjà, published in the journal of Behavioural Processes, Volume 177, reveals that cockroaches live a collectivist, egalitarian, and interconnected life, operating on the basis of collective intelligence and decision-making shaped by individual interactions. Such collective behaviour and lifestyle were not alien to human beings and their societies. Collective culture is organic to the entire animal kingdom, including human beings.
However, this collectivist way of life was destroyed with the rise of capitalist society, where individual pain and pleasure were separated from their collective origins and collectivist solutions. A brutal, barbaric, selfish, and nasty capitalist culture was promoted as an alternative in the name of individual freedom, further destroying all forms of collectivist culture to promote a supercilious, utilitarian culture of individualism. In this framework, individual utility, pleasure, and satisfaction shape individual actions, yet individual alienation is the net result of such actions under capitalism—where exploitation and inequality are inseparable. The capitalist system is not designed to empower individuals or secure their happiness. However, the unjust culture of capitalism has now entered judicial systems in India and other parts of the world, where commercialisation of judiciary is destroying the collective foundations of justice and its institutional processes in the courtrooms. When the ability to pay decides the nature of and access to justice, justice is fundamentally denied both as a road and as a destination. Justice denied to one individual is justice denied to all.
Therefore, it is imperative for people like Chief Justice Surya Kant and his legal fraternity need to learn from cockroaches—their collective culture and swarm intelligence—where interdependent life determines their survival as one of the longest-living species. Cockroaches can teach us the collective foundations of life, equality, and justice. The survival of India and its judicial system depends on its ability to empower people through judicial interventions for the delivery of justice without any form of bias. The individualisation of justice and its delivery system promotes the powerful few and undermines the marginalised majority. Such an insidious institutional system destroys the very foundation of justice and constitutes a mockery of the judicial system, where power and privileges are protected at the cost of delivering justice to people.
This unjust system breeds resistance with the help of satire, which defines the rise of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)—a breath of fresh air in the depressing politics of dominance. Contemporary stand-up comedians, various activists, and their progressive movements have become the custodians of India and its constitutional democracy. The collectivist spirit of youth, along with their ability to think critically, act swiftly with reason, and make sacrifices, not only defeated British colonialism but also established the republic in which Chief Justice Surya Kant now enjoys his privileges as Chief Justice and his subsidised life style. The banning of social media accounts of the CJP reveals that freedom and democracy are dwindling due to a biased judiciary that defends the authoritarian regimes of politics and its crony capitalism in India.
The resistance to such an alliance between the judiciary, the state, and the government is a recipe for the death of constitutional democracy in India. However, the satirical youth movement online—defined by the rise of the CJP—is waiting to move to the streets to protect their country, their future, and their freedom. No Chief Justice can stop it. The youth movement against caste, class, and gender bias in society and the judiciary can only deepen democracy and create a progressive, egalitarian, and collectivist society—like that of cockroaches—in India, where people can live in peace and harmony.
