Ever since may when he was unexpectedly sworn in as Chief Minister of the industrially important state of Tamil Nadu (pop. 77 million), former movie star C. Vijay Joseph has resolutely persisted in wearing sober, dark, Western-style suits on all state occasions, including his swearing-in ceremony. Vijay has broken with a sixty-year tradition of male politicians sporting the starched all-white kurta and lungi. In a sartorial message widely being interpreted as making a clean break with the wolves dressed as sheep, Vijay has adamantly refused to identify with the state’s political class. Moreover it’s petinent to note that he is an unapologetic Christian in a country in which for the past decade the BJP government at the Centre has won three General Elections on the plank of Hindu majoritarianism and religious identity. Other breaks with post-independence politics are manifesting countrywide.

In July, the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), a newly nomenclatured organisation which owned a sarcastic remark of Chief Justice of India equating unemployed youth with “cockroaches and parasites,” quickly mobilized 22 million youth online under the CJP banner to march on Parliament in New Delhi protesting public examination scandals, forced the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan shaking the seemingly invincible three-term BJP-led coalition at the Centre. The students march on Parliament resulted in a violent police reaction in which hundreds of students were injured, prompting an unprecedented Supreme Court amnesty for students involved in the police-youth confrontation.

Earlier in a bye-election in Bihar, political strategist Prashant Kishor whose newly-registered Jan Suraaj party failed to win a single seat in the Bihar legislative election of 2025, wrested the state’s Bankipur constituency — a BJP bastion for over three decades. And most recently following prolonged agitation in Parliament, the BJP’s much-proclaimed Foreign Contributions Regulations Amendment Act, which would have legitimized sequestration of property of minority — especially Christian minority education institutions — for trifling procedural lapses, has been referred to an all-party Parliamentary Standing Committee for re-examination.

These may seem ephemeral phenomena likely to soon fade from public memory. However closely examined, these phenomena are linked heralding strong new winds of change blowing across the nation. It signals clear impatience and rejection of time-agnostic politics of the post-independence era.

Moreover, socialism, class and caste and new millennium religious identity rhetoric has become stale and played out. The world’s largest child and youth population wants unity, harmony and real education which will enable Gen Z to stand on its feet and fend for itself. The divide-and-rule politics of the post-independence era is dead. Has the venal, self-serving establishment heard this message? Doubtful.