India, May 24 -- In old India, revolutions were organised in underground rooms. In new India, they are launched through Instagram stories with neon fonts.

India is a strange democracy. Here, a matchstick can become an ideology, a meme can become a movement, and a cockroach can suddenly start behaving like Che Guevara with a Wi-Fi connection.

The latest online tamasha around the so-called "Cockroach Janata Party" is not really about cockroaches. Nor is it entirely about unemployed youth. It is about something India has perfected in the social-media age: manufacturing outrage first, and discovering ideology later.

What began as a courtroom remark by Chief Justice Surya Kant was instantly chopped into digital sushi-context removed, outrag...