We are all labouring under a huge inferiority complex that manifests itself in bullying when we are in a mob, and abject surrender when we are outnumbered.
The bullying mob mentality demands the satisfaction of seeing a privileged person (white people, English-speaking intellectuals, educated folks, politicians, film stars, landed families, bureaucrats, corporate honchos, bankers, rich businesspeople, etc.) being humiliated. Then, along comes a Modi and delivers this Schadenfreude to us, and we adore him for doing that, even when he really isn’t. We don’t care if he destroys the economy, puts us in personal pain, and makes us beg for our own money. As long as we think and are convinced that the privileged are being hurt in some way, we are fine with it. All it takes for us to stand in line for our own money is the illusion of morbid satisfaction that an Ambani and a Gandhi, an Amma and a Behen, a Mallya and a Khan are all standing in the sun. Even if they aren’t.
It’s so easy to fool us.
By the way, here’s another interesting observation: The far-right and far-left are exactly the same in their quest for power. They appeal through different ideologies, but what they deliver is exactly the same: a satisfactory sense of Schadenfreude that someone we hate is being fucked over, even if we, at that very point, are being buggered up our ass by the very people we think are being hurt for our pleasure.