26 . 07 . 2026 · INDIA · field Notes

The New Republic of India – Powered by Memes and Gen Z

They tried to move mountains, and in the process became one.

This is all anyone can talk about. If you have access to the internet, chances are you’ve already seen it. The Gen Z protests, all across India, led by a generation we’d written off walked up to its own government, asked it to answer for itself, and didn’t go home when it was told to.

Gen Z – the ones we’d written off as the laziest generation of all generations. They’ve gone and done what very few generations before them managed. They showed us what courage actually looks like. And they showed us a mirror while they were at it.

They used a brand new playbook. Non-cooperation, non-violence, with a side of memes. Or maybe the memes were the mains, and my millennial brain is still trying to process how it all came about.

No single march you could break up and call it a night. It was more like a glacier. Looks like it’s sitting perfectly still, and then you notice it’s been carving up the whole valley the entire time.

Mountains are my favourite theme to photograph. To me they represent timelessness and stoicism. They give you time to set up your shot, build a frame, and click. Nothing moves them. The only challenge is getting to them.

When the Gen Z protests began, it occurred to me that the kids are against a mountain, that we, and our previous generations help build. Would they be able to move this mountain? Very few of us were confident that they could.

And all of us were wrong. Not only did they move the mountain, they also became the mountain themselves, and showed the rest of us a path that we were to afraid to explore on our own.

The kids tackled every objection with love and a laugh; a photo and a meme; a video and a dance.

A hundred years ago the British hanged a young revolutionary Ramprasad Bismil. He took to the gallows the following lines penned by a Patna based youngster named Bismil Azimabadi :

सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है,

देखना है ज़ोर कितना बाज़ु-ए-क़ातिल में है।

[The wish to give up our lives is in our hearts now.

Let’s see how much strength the executioner’s arm really has.]

This lot did not have a war cry like Bismil’s. Just phones. And a lot of courage. They looked at the mountain and refused to look away.

And the mountain moved. Not all of it, not overnight. But the part everyone swore was fixed, the machinery, the whole “protest never works here” of it, that moved. They moved a mountain.

And somewhere in doing it, they became one.

The generation we kept calling lazy turned out to be the most effective.

We thought they were soft. Turns out they were the hardest thing in the frame.

I stand corrected.

Photographs MADE WITH SONY A7R V AND 24-70 MM F2.8

INDIA ·2026 · FIELD Notes