NEW DELHI — India's education minister tendered his resignation on Saturday, meeting a key demand of students whose anti-government protests swelled this week beyond the capital New Delhi and onto the streets of more than a dozen cities.
The students held the minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, responsible for a series of leaks in nationwide exams for university seats or government jobs, which millions of students take every year.
The protests posed the most serious challenge to the 12-year rule of India's Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi. For weeks, the government had ignored the protesters, then vilified them, with the education minister calling protest leaders "the B team of terrorists," according to the Indian daily The Hindu. Presenters of Modi-loyal media outlets suggested the protest leaders were paid by India's enemy and neighbor, Pakistan.
In a two-page letter posted on X, Pradhan said he was resigning because he didn't want the students' anger to be exploited by "anti-national forces." He did not clarify what he meant by "anti-national forces," but it appeared to be a dig at insinuations that the protesters were led, or infiltrated by enemies of India. Pradhan did not apologize for the paper leaks.
Near the main protest site in New Delhi, streets echoed with cheering students. Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old whose satirical group 'Cockroach Janta Party' has been leading the protests, fell to his knees on hearing the news. Then he raised his fist and announced: "We have done it."
In a statement, Dipke said the students had other demands: compensation for the families of students who died by suicide after questions of a medical entrance exam paper leaked in May, forcing some 2 million students to retake the test – one of the incidents that initially sparked these protests.
The local newspaper The Indian Express reported at least a dozen students died by suicide following the announcement, with some leaving notes behind saying they could not bear the idea of resitting the exam.
The student leaders also demanded action against the security personnel who attacked protestors as they marched to Parliament in New Delhi earlier this week.
'Difficult for the state to demonize them'
Pradhan's resignation suggests that the government had to shift tactics after protests, which began in New Delhi on June 7, dramatically swelled in size. Unlike previous protests in India's recent history, these demonstrations cut across the country's traditional demographic lines.
India has the world's largest number of young people, with around 367 million people between the ages of 15 and 29. Education is "a kind of leveler, bringing everybody together," says sociologist Raheel Dhattiwala.
Political analyst Sushant Singh of Yale University says because the crowd "cuts across caste, class, religion, language," the government struggled to deploy its usual playbook. "It has become very difficult for the state to demonize them," says Singh. "That is the uniqueness of this protest at this point."
Many protesters came from the heartland of the ruling Hindu nationalist party, a belt of territory from central to north India. Brothers Rishabh, 23, and Mohit, 22, traveled 50 miles by rickshaw, train, and metro to reach the central protest site in New Delhi. Like many Indians, they do not have a family name.
"The [exam] papers are being leaked, the rich are paying for their children to pass, and [we] poor people are being left behind," Rishabh told NPR on Friday. "Where are we supposed to go?"
But young Indians' complaints weren't triggered by the exam leaks alone. The protests coincided with a controversial comment by India's Chief Justice Surya Kant describing unemployed youth as "cockroaches" in May, a comment he later said was misquoted.
The comments are what prompted Dipke to form the 'Cockroach Janta Party.'
The party has since received support from prominent Indians, including author Arundhati Roy, who recently wrote: "Just when hope seemed lost, they came. Young roaches riding in on the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge and a joke."
High-profile hunger strike ends, but demands remain
These protests dramatically swelled in size last week after police forcibly removed a respected educator – who was on hunger strike in solidarity with the students – from the New Delhi protest site, effectively detaining him in a government hospital.
On Friday, the educator, Sonam Wangchuk, announced that he had broken his 26-day fast after receiving assurances that the government would hold authorities to account over the country's failing exam systems.
Wangchuk's fast wasn't the only driving force. Even more students held their own protests across the country after police violently cracked down on thousands of protesters who tried to march into parliament on Monday.
Following that outcry, the prime minister Narendra Modi finally addressed students directly: "Friends, I understand that paper leak is no ordinary subject," he began in Hindi in a post released to Instagram overnight Thursday. He said his government had caught those accused of leaking exam questions and they "are lying in jails."
But critics noted Modi did not respond to the protesters' core demand: the resignation of the education minister. After Modi issued that statement, student leaders said they would meet with a government representative. They later told protesters they had repeated their demand for the education minister's swift resignation. They told students, if he did not resign over the weekend, they would call for nationwide marches on Monday.
On Saturday, they got what they asked for.
With the minister's resignation, it's unclear if protest leaders will be able to maintain momentum against the government, or whether this emboldens students to make more demands of the government which tried to ignore them for weeks.
Bilal Kuchay contributed reporting from New Delhi.
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