Superheroes at the protest: How Jantar Mantar found its own icons
A student from Agra arrived at Jantar Mantar on Thursday in a full Spider-Man costume, moved through the crowd raising chants of Vande Mataram, and stopped every few metres for selfies with fellow protesters who had come from across the country demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Not far from him, another protester wore the green mask of the Hulk and carried a broom and garbage bags through the gathering, collecting waste and carrying it to disposal points. These are the images Jantar Mantar is producing on its 48th day.
The protest has a Spiderman. The protest has a Hulk who sweeps floors. The protest, it turns out, has its own kind of heroes.
The student in the Spider-Man suit, who said he is a fan of the character, drew a parallel between Peter Parker’s fictional journey and the real one unfolding at the protest site. “His main message was that with great power comes great responsibility. Just like Peter Parker faced challenges while trying to do the right thing, many students here are fighting their own battles. That’s why I am standing with them,” he said. The Hulk declined to be named but explained his method. “This is my way of supporting the cause. Keeping the place clean is also a form of service,” he said, and went back to collecting garbage.
A third student, Vineet, held up a placard that read “Stark Students Stand United,” inspired by the Stark family of the television series Game of Thrones. “The Starks always stood for what they believed was right; the Stark family’s commitment to honour and justice is what has brought us together. That’s exactly what all of us are trying to do here,” he said.
The protest site, which has already spilled beyond Jantar Mantar onto the adjoining Tolstoy Road, has acquired the infrastructure of a small, temporary settlement. There are medical shelters, food and water camps, and stations where volunteers provide A4 papers, notepads, and markers to help newly arrived students make their placards, writing slogans for those who need help putting their thoughts on paper.
The CJP protest is demanding accountability over alleged irregularities in competitive examinations, comprehensive reform of the education system, the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak, and compensation for families of students who allegedly died by suicide over examination-related issues.
What Thursday added to the agitation was a visual dimension that no organiser planned, and no government directive can easily counter. When a protest begins producing its own iconography drawn from Marvel comics and Game of Thrones, when a student from Agra takes the time to procure a full Spider-Man costume and travel to Delhi in it, when another student decides that wearing the Hulk mask and sweeping the ground is the most meaningful contribution he can make, something has shifted in how young people are processing both their anger and their investment in the cause.
