Since students first took to the streets near Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, it became impossible to scroll through Instagram or X without running into a video captioned “most unserious generation ever”. Jokes at the expense of those in power—instead of the oppressed—made a comeback after many years. The memes, the posters, and the placards made by protestors read like punchlines aimed squarely at the establishment.
Several protesters were dressed as Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar. “Season 1 players respawned,” announced captions on Instagram (Season 1 being the Independence movement). We also saw, in what is the most influential protest in recent times, many a Spider-Man and Cockroach in attendance. Underneath the costumes and the choreography, what we witnessed was a generation using humour to survive tragedy in real time.The comments were broadly divided into two sections. The first insisted that this is no laughing matter: that violence, hunger strikes, and student deaths demand nothing less than sombreness. This is also the demographic occasionally delegitimising this protest on such grounds. The second section salutes the students precisely for their refusal to be sombre, often adding to the humour and reading their irreverence as its own form of commitment to democratic dissent.
