Last month, as thousands of young Indians led by a group calling itself the Cockroach Janta Party, marched towards Parliament in New Delhi, they were met with tear gas and struck with batons by the police. It appeared that India’s moment in South Asia’s Gen Z revolution had finally arrived.
As one journalist observed, for the first time since 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office, fear had “switched sides”. The protests began over paper leaks that resulted in the cancellation of the...