Kafkaesque Metamorphosis in India

Source: Medium

Kafka’s Metamorphosis never appealed to me though I’m a diehard fan of The Trial and The Castle. Nevertheless, the recent protests by youth against the Modi government resurrected Kafka’s metamorphosed Gregor Samsa in my consciousness.

Gregor Samsa was a dutiful travelling salesman until he woke up one morning as a transformed creature looking like a cockroach. That was a century and a decade back. One such metaphorical metamorphosis happened recently in India. A significant number of young people identified themselves with that creature which Kafka described as monstrous vermin and an unclean pest.

These are youngsters who shuttled between hyper-competitive exam halls and a gruelling gig economy. Add to that the systemic disenfranchisement which questioned the very citizenship of over 140 million Indians. When the Prime Minister declared from every possible platform that his country was becoming an economic superpower, his Gen Z quasi-citizens were assuming the identity of subterranean bugs: disposable, driven to invisibility by the system, and resilient only because survival demanded it.

When a vast young population of a country begins to call itself cockroaches, they are performing the same tragic diagnosis Kafka made over a hundred years ago.

Gregor Samsa did not turn into a bug out of nowhere. His transformation was the physical manifestation of extreme alienation. Gregor lived entirely for utility. His sole purpose was to pay off his father’s debts and support his family. The moment his body failed to function as an engine of labour, his status in the household plummeted from provider to repulsive burden.

For millions of young Indians today, life feels strikingly similar. Raised on the promise that gruelling study hours and endless competitive entrance exams would guarantee social mobility, many find themselves adrift in a hyper-saturated job market. They feel valued strictly for their economic productivity. When unemployment, burnout, or systemic barriers stall their progress, society’s gaze shits rapidly from admiration to disappointment. Like Gregor, they realise their humanity was conditional on their utility.

They realise that all the gods and temples and holy corridors that their PM is offering them month after month won’t save them. Instead they are told that earning 200 rupees daily from a street-side pakoda shop is a patriotic economic activity.

You can delude people in the name of gods and religion for quite a while. But soon the intelligent among them, especially the youth, will break out of the delusion, realising that they have been transmuted into some Kafkaesque cockroaches by the system which makes tall claims.

No less a person than the Chief Justice of India called the youth cockroaches. “There are youngsters like cockroaches,” said Surya Kant the chief justice, “who don’t get any employment and don’t have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, some of them become RTI activists… and they start attacking everyone.” He called them “parasites.”

Who made this system, boss? Why can’t all the hundreds of gods you’re offering save the situation?

Gods have palatial temples now. “Ram Lalla now has a permanent home,” PM Modi said after constructing the Rs3000-crore “house” for Lord Rama. Many more temples and holy places came up after that.

But the country’s youngsters struggled to break out of the cubbyholes of their pitiful existence. The gods in granite refused to open their eyes and see the shrunken worlds of the youth who were locked into endless cycles of exam prep in cramped rented rooms or stayed trapped like cockroaches in the little spaces of their childhood.

The deepest tragedy of Kafka’s novella is perhaps not the metamorphosis itself but the reaction of the family. Gregor’s father is furious and hurls an apple at his back which rots in his back killing him eventually. His mother recoils in horror on seeing him. His sister who loved him genuinely earlier eventually declares that he must be dumped like a disgusting animal which he had become.

That’s just how Modi government dealt with the revolting youth. The great leader who becomes a high priest in temples, psychological mentor and motivational guru in radio talks, Hriday Samrat on political stages refused to engage in an open dialogue with the youth of his country. Instead he generated toxic hostility.

But the cockroach is indestructible, so to say. It survives radiation, darkness, pesticide and crushing weight. It thrives in the cracks of rigid structures.

When young protesters or disillusioned youth call themselves cockroaches, there is an undercurrent of dark satire and quiet defiance. What they’re declaring is: You may view us as low, pestilential, and disposable, but we are here, standing tall in the twilight, extending our shadows to your corridors of power. The slur you hurled at us is our solid shield now.