In May 2026, when the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, said “youngsters like cockroaches” were attacking the system, he triggered a political maelstrom.
Although Surya Kant has since claimed that his remarks were targeted only at “lawyers with fake degrees,” the outrage over his comments ballooned into a public protest. This agitation channelled widespread frustration over the frequent paper-leak controversies surrounding the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), an examination for those who want to pursue undergraduate degrees in medicine. On 25 July, the protest culminated with the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Harshit Singh, a queer rights activist, was among the many queer and trans people who regularly attended the demonstrations in Delhi starting early-June, when the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) held its first protest. On 20 June, Harshit also took the stage to raise awareness about the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026. Enacted earlier this year, the Amendment Act rolls back the right of trans persons to self-identify their gender; introduces government medical boards to determine who would legally qualify as trans; and could criminalise community structures that support trans persons.
queerbeat met Harshit at the protest site on 25 July, shortly after Pradhan resigned. We spoke to them about their experience of visibilising trans struggles at the demonstration, reclaiming protest spaces as a queer person, and the implications of this agitation on future movements led by those from marginalised communities.
Did you face any resistance while talking about trans rights during the student demonstrations?
No one stopped us from speaking up about any issue. I was personally asked to talk about the Trans Bill. Anish Gawande [a queer politician and spokesperson for the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar)] is also a part of the team [organising the protests] and we discussed this at length.
We knew people would raise questions as to why we are talking about the Trans Bill, that we could be trolled. But we knew it’s important to talk about it because you can’t separate education from the Trans Bill. This is something that affects an entire community. We also talked about the discrimination women face in seeking education. Similarly, how can we ignore trans people, especially since that discrimination has only increased after the Trans Bill.
So, we spoke of gender neutral washrooms—how humiliating it can be when you can’t use a washroom before your exam. And we spoke about the importance of gender-neutral checking points. As you know, when trans people go to give exams they stand between the male and female lines and their IDs are verified for hours. Their friends pass through, but they just have to wait for hours and hours while people debate their gender. These are all important aspects of education.
We spoke about all issues here. We spoke about Manipur, because the children of Manipur are kids too; we spoke about labourers, because government schools are in such a bad state, how do labourers afford an education for their kids on such low salaries. When people say, “You should only talk about NEET, don’t talk about this or that,”—why not? These are all issues of our country. It is important to have spaces like this to address all issues.
Were people receptive when you brought up these issues?
Definitely, they were listening. The internet world that has only seen a fraction of it, heard one slogan, and is questioning why this issue is being raised here. They are the same people who harassed us and made memes on us and trolled us. They are the same people questioning why the Trans Bill is being discussed, so they don’t really make a difference to us.
But the people who were there were very supportive. You could see how much people were appreciating anyone who was being vocal in this space. The people who were here and heard our speech really praised us and listened to us. I think it sparked greater solidarity with the community.
There were some queerphobic slogans and posters at the protests as well. How did those make you feel?
We did address this. Whenever I saw someone carrying a poster like this I tried to have a conversation with them about it. But this increased after the 20th [20 July, post the Parliament March], when lakhs of people arrived at the protest. After that, there were such weird slogans or posters. But before that, the way we built this protest and tried to make it a safe space, that should be an example in and of itself.
On June 6 there were some right-wing reporters who interviewed me and others and then shared extremely transphobic and homophobic versions of the same online. Following this, we faced a lot of trolling online, particularly from Bharatiya Janata Party and Bajrang Dal people. While it [the protest] has been largely safe, we do always have to be alert. At the protest site, we are comfortable but outside, given the issues we are speaking up on, we are aware that people may attack us. Recently there had been some heckling and mockery outside the protest site, so we ensured we weren’t travelling alone and took extra precautions.
We tried to sensitise people here and held a community meeting to discuss how we can make the space safer for the [queer] community. You may have seen a queer-friendly tent. We tried to create such spaces. Because the number of queer people attending the protest swelled day-by-day—from only a few in the beginning to thousands now, which is a very big thing. One of the [former] spokespersons, Vijeta Dahiya had passed transphobic comments, but I’m happy people are seeing this movement as bigger than a person, as bigger than one person’s thought process.
People did have that understanding and they understood us, which is a beautiful thing. The same goes for people who may come to support anti-trans protests. I’m sure they would also have lots of questions for transgender people—not every trans person is nice, some create a ruckus, we know that. But if because of that, people did not talk about trans rights, that would be a big issue. We should always see the movement as larger than individual people.
Is the perception that protests don’t work changing—and what about protests that are primarily organised by those from marginalised communities?
Yes, there is this delusional perception that protests don’t work. Maybe even when we were protesting against the Trans Amendment Bill, we didn’t do as much as we should have. In my view, we should have grown the protest more, tried to present it better.
Marginalised communities also have various fears and insecurities when it comes to being on the ground. Despite that, we need to protest because protesting means being resilient, fighting on. Win and loss comes later, but continuing on is important. This protest is a reminder of that, because here, people have been fighting.
If you see—the protests that are stubborn do emerge victorious, such as the farmers’ protests. The farmers did not budge and they won. Here as well, this isn’t a full victory yet, but it’s a first step towards it. This has been possible because people stuck with it. So it’s a reminder that we should not lose hope or feel that it won’t work.
This is a thought process that has changed among Gen Z, but among millennials or our parents’ generation this is the common sense—that nothing will happen, why are you going, you’ll get tired, take care of yourself, what will happen if you speak up. These thoughts are common among previous generations, but that has reduced among the Gen Z. They are vocal, which is a good thing—stay vocal and keep speaking.
When people across different intersectionalities—of class, caste, sexualities—come together, does that make a protest more powerful?
Definitely. With this protest initially, people started segregating—they wanted to restrict it, saying that only NEET students should be here, but that wasn’t the case. If you are an Indian you should be here, no matter what your issues are.
A lot of people have been calling it a Gen Z protest but I don’t think that’s true. It’s a protest for everyone. If you are Indian you should be affected by every issue and find a way to show solidarity for it in your own way. Even with the Trans Bill, it doesn’t matter if you are trans or not, you will be impacted in some way—because it is a system failure, it will impact your life somehow. So it does affect us all and we all should be speaking up. This exchange among communities amplifies all issues.
Some people questioned why this protest was being made political. But you can’t run away from politics in this country. You are part of politics by virtue of being a citizen. Everything is political, you can’t run away from it. Having people from different ideologies, communities, and backgrounds is very important.
During protests against the Trans Amendment Act, did you feel that there was a lack of solidarity from people outside the community?
Definitely—‘lack of’ is an underestimate. There were maybe one or two percent of people who were from outside the community. Even within the community, support was less, because people saw it as only a Trans issue. But I have hope that changes slowly as there is an exchange of people across protests—this gives me hope and I think this is important.
I have always been a pretty vocal person as an artist when it comes to different issues. I’ve participated in many protests—such as the street dog protests [which opposed the court-ordered removal of street dogs from public spaces]. Within the [queer] community as well, we have to remember to show solidarity for all issues and not just those specific to Pride or the community.
We should lend our voices to all issues, I think that’s crucial.
Are you hopeful that solidarity for trans rights or other issues faced by marginalised communities will increase after this protest?
Of course, it will increase and it is increasing, I have seen people come sit and try to understand the [queer] community here and accept them.
I was very happy when we were raising slogans on stage—we witnessed with our own eyes that there were thousands of people around the stage, screaming in unison “Trans Bill wapas lo” [Take Back the Trans Bill]. This is a very big thing. I could have raised the slogan and no one could have responded, but the fact that everyone raised it with me is a big achievement already. It shows solidarity—that no one hesitated or shrank away from shouting with us.
We also raised slogans such as “Self Identification ka adhikar zindabad” [Long Live the right to self-identify]; “Mera Gender, Meri Marzi” [My gender, my choice], “Mere Kapde, Meri Marzi” [My clothes, My choice]. People shouted with us, sloganeered with us without shame—this shows a change already. No one made fun of us, people supported us and appreciated us.
The people who make fun are the mockers and harassers, who have always been that way, and it’s just a lack of education. When there is education reform, and people are taught properly about trans people, this won’t be an issue at all. We are all part of the current education system. We know that we didn’t study anything about this—about consent, about sexuality. We didn’t study any of this in school, we had to inform ourselves. We learned from the internet, but if these things were in our textbooks and taught in schools then that would create greater sensitivity and responsibility. That’s very important. In the end, it’s all connected to education.
This all began in June, which was Pride month, and I would say to all queer people —we need to reclaim these spaces. Don’t run away from it. If someone is mocking you, address that, but come back. It’s your country, your space, you have the same right to protest as anyone else. Come join and reclaim this space. The more we run away and don’t address things head-on, the more people will make memes of us and troll us.
We have seen in the past few months, how people from the [queer] community are being made soft targets at every protest. But when we reclaim these spaces and question people, maybe they will be scared to troll someone the next time. They may not have thought that people would start supporting and loving us so much when they spread hate about us.
What’s next?
As this comes to a close, the first thing we need to do is that we all should come forward, we all should talk about the Trans Bill again. We cannot stay quiet. The main reason for addressing the Trans Bill here was also that the issue had died down. Nobody was talking about it.
And even if [some] people made a mockery of us, I’m happy that at least it was on everyone’s feed— even as a meme, it was there.
So speak up. Talk about it. We aren’t going to let this go so easily.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.