I probably shouldn’t write this…

I mean, every fibre of my being screams “do not do this… you’re not the same person you were 10 years ago.”

That’s correct. Because now I have bills to pay, people to care about, and people to lose.

But I’ve been silent for a long time. Not because I don’t care anymore, and not because my ideologies changed, but because, like I’ve said a million times before, writing an article on the internet can’t start a revolution.

But here we are. The reason I’m beating around the bush is to make sure the people who aren’t interested in the actual subject get bored and stop reading by now. If you’ve made it past this paragraph, then you’ll understand that I’m on to something.

So here is what I saw.

A few days ago, a boy, barely 18, posted an AI-generated photograph captioned: ‘We want dictatorship in India…’

Wow. And if I use the word ‘Nazi’, people get triggered very, very badly.

That post is why I’m writing this after years of writing only fiction.

Because what has happened in the last few weeks has proven something really important. Our ruling party has cracked the social media game, the others are playing catch-up, and all this mass posting has produced a generation fluent in outrage and illiterate in the constitution. People who have absolutely no idea what they are saying, or how the constitution works, and most importantly, they do not understand the hierarchy between the government and the people.

Let me give you an example.

Say you’re a landowner. You have a beautiful property, and you’ve appointed a caretaker to look after it and use its resources for your welfare. You will be paying a salary, of course. But a few days later, you see the guy is not doing his job. There is degradation in your property, and there is a decline in your resources.

So, what do you do? You criticise the person. The caretaker.

And then what happens? The caretaker (and his friends and assistants) accuse you of not being fit to own your property. You’re ‘insulting’ your own property by criticising their work.

And to make matters worse, your neighbours start supporting your caretaker, and together they plan to evict you from your own land.

Sounds familiar?

Well, make some replacements. You stay you. The property becomes your nation, your country. The caretaker becomes the elected government; his salary is the tax you pay. And the neighbours are the supporters of the ruling party, who interpret your criticism of the ruling party as anti-national activity.

The basic principle of democracy is that the government is ‘of the people, by the people, for the people.’; not the other way around.

But somehow, that is the narrative that’s been peddled to us for over a decade. Whether it’s the state or the central government, it’s the standard modus operandi: “If you’re criticising the system, there is something wrong with your patriotism.”

Tell me one thing. How do the people we’ve elected become the epitome of patriotism? Because we voted for them?

Sure, they will be the people representing our country on national and international platforms. But how does that make them the poster children of nationalism? How does pointing a finger at an elected official and saying ‘you’re not doing your job, you need to step down’ make me an anti-national?

What is the definition of anti-national, by the way?

Am I stealing and selling state secrets? — No!

Am I misusing taxpayers’ money for personal gain? — No!

Am I failing to do the primary job I’ve been assigned, yet claiming I’ve been assessed wrong? — No! (I’d be fired from my work if I did!)

Am I failing to address the fundamental things that are wrong with this country, spending time building religious monuments and addressing thousands of utter bullshit nobody has time for? — No!

So how does that make me an anti-national? How does that make me any less patriotic than the other guy?

Also, the questions I just asked — for whom would the answers be ‘Yes’? Think about it.

And that is the part that actually scares me. A narrative this weak shouldn’t survive a single honest question. It survives because somebody has spent a decade building a generation that will never ask one.

Social media is a very powerful tool. For brands and marketers, it’s an adapt-or-die situation. But the ruling parties have ‘weaponised’ it to peddle their narrative and to monger hate. You don’t have to win the argument anymore. You just have to post more often than the person making it.

And the situation is dire, to say the least.

It works because there is nothing left standing in its way. A compromised education system, a wrong interpretation of the constitution, and the normalising of fascist thought processes — and bingo! You get a generation with empty brains and poisoned minds.

People who genuinely believe that higher education makes you less national, less patriotic. And the message is clear: ‘Do not ask questions!’ You’re not allowed to ask questions. Shut up and move on. That is why lathis are charged at students, and why anyone asking questions is marked as an anti-national or a sympathiser of a rival political ideology.

Poison!

Hate and fear. Peddling these two emotions has been the playbook of many political parties for ages. Sometimes it’s the superiority of a race, and sometimes it’s the superiority of an ideology or a religion.

And here, it has a name. ‘Hindutva’ — the keyword nowadays. The finished product. A metric that anyone can use to measure anyone else’s patriotism, handed to people who were never taught what they are measuring.

We’ve started to forget that Hinduism is not a religion, it’s a way of life. And the moment you compress it into ‘Hindutva’, you profane it. You take a way of life and turn it into a membership card. A loyalty test.

In fact, Vedic Hinduism doesn’t have hundreds of gods and goddesses at all. Many of the deities we worship today, especially the tantric goddesses, were adapted from ‘Vajrayana’, or Tantric Buddhism — not the idol worship itself.

But can we still think like this?

Because here is the thing about the caretaker. He is still a caretaker. The property is still yours. The salary is still coming out of your pocket. And no lease is permanent.

The only thing that makes him the owner is you forgetting that you are.

Can we understand our fundamental, constitutional rights and speak up, despite the challenges, the threats and the fear? Or are we going to accept everything and move on, saying ‘not my problem’, and pray that things will get better?

Did we really open Pandora’s box, only to find that ‘hope’ is the only thing we’ve got left?

Scary times ahead.