Arooj Aurangzeb calls out support for Indian Gen Z
Arooj Aurangzeb is a name that carries real weight in Pakistan’s student activism circles. In 2019, she went viral after a video of her reciting a powerful poem during the student solidarity march spread rapidly across social media. She was protesting alongside thousands of other students who were demanding the restoration of student unions and proper political representation for young people within the country’s institutions. The videos from that movement were electric, emotional and widely shared, including hers.
Seven years later, she is back in the public conversation, but this time it is not because of a protest. It is because of a contradiction she says she can no longer stay quiet about.
When Indian students began protesting over the NEET paper leak at Jantar Mantar, demanding justice and systemic reform in the country’s examination system, Pakistani social media users responded with visible enthusiasm. Support poured in from across the border, with many Pakistanis praising the Indian Gen Z for their courage, awareness and refusal to be silent.
Arooj Aurangzeb watched that wave of support and felt something shift inside her. She took to social media to point out what she saw as a glaring and painful inconsistency. While Pakistanis were celebrating the Indian protesters and calling their movement inspiring, many of those same people had ridiculed, trolled and dismissed her and her fellow students when they took to the streets in 2019 for exactly the same kind of systemic change.
She did not hold back. She highlighted the irony directly, asking how the same people who mocked Pakistani students fighting for their rights could turn around and feel so moved by Indian Gen Z doing the same thing. Her post was not framed as anti-India. It was framed as a question about selective empathy and the way Pakistanis sometimes extend more admiration to voices from abroad than to those speaking up at home.
The internet did not respond with silence. Reactions were divided and sharp. Some users sided with her immediately. “We never stand by our own heroes,” one person wrote, capturing the frustration that Arooj was articulating. Others pushed back, with one commenter arguing that the dynamics of Indian and Pakistani Gen Z are completely different and that direct comparisons were unfair. Another raised a pointed question of their own, asking why so many Pakistani revolutionaries eventually leave the country on foreign visas, a remark that suggested the critique went both ways.
Arooj Aurangzeb’s voice in 2019 was a reminder that young Pakistanis were willing to stand up and demand something better. Her voice in 2026 is a reminder that those same young people are still watching, still paying attention, and still asking why the recognition they deserved then continues to be denied while admiration flows so freely elsewhere.
