I do not like Modi. At all. That is not a secret.
I also actively hate and despise those who aided and abetted him, and continue to do so in his crimes against this nation.
However, I would be appalled if he were overthrown in any sort of USA-sponsored action, whether covert (using international trade, financial pressure, or sanctions to coerce his funders and backers into dethroning him through acts of commission or omission) or overt (highly unlikely, though with the current occupant of the Oval Office, nothing feels entirely off the table), and an alternative government, however sympathetic to my ideology or moral position, were to be installed in his place.
I know nothing is black and white. I know it is entirely possible that he himself was midwifed into power through massive funding (both direct and indirect), and through the now well-documented manipulation of social media ecosystems in the early 2010s, and that he may neither be the first nor the last leader to be shaped in this way, nor India the only country subjected to such interventions.
That said, if it were to be conclusively shown that India’s democratic trajectory itself was bent or engineered at that scale by external power, I would be genuinely appalled, and likely pushed either towards extreme action or total paralysed inaction. I do not know which. I only know that I would be sick to the gut, because that would mean something far more corrosive than a bad leader; it would mean a compromised republic.
So yes.
Rue that the entire Indian media, judiciary, bureaucracy, and uniformed forces have become so spineless and subservient as to boggle any time traveller from 1947.
Rue that his complete failure in foreign policy has antagonised nearly every neighbour we have, to the point that the only entity in our immediate neighbourhood with whom we enjoy consistently cordial relations is, of all possibilities, the Taliban.
Rue that he has single-handedly wrecked a once-resilient economy with Tughlaqesque ideas sold as bold reform.
Rue that he has presided over a rupture in religious coexistence and mutual respect unseen since Partition.
Rue that he has managed to put Hindus in greater danger, socially, financially, and politically, than any so-called foreign invader, Mughal, or colonial power ever did over the past one thousand years.
Rue that he has not merely hollowed out the opposition, but also eviscerated his own party, leaving behind an ideological wasteland that will take years to even map, let alone repair.
Rue that constitutional offices have been reduced to instruments, and institutions to props.
And rejoice that the only way to go from here is up.
Rejoice that at least some sections of the media have begun to rediscover their spine.
Rejoice that people who were mesmerised by him have started to break out of their hypnotic state.
Rejoice that India’s fundamentals are still strong enough for the economy to bounce back, given half a chance.
Rejoice that a younger generation is learning, painfully but decisively, the difference between spectacle and governance.
Rejoice that the idea of India has proven harder to kill than its enemies assumed.
Rejoice that the final domino, the last straw, the likely nail in his political coffin may well be because he rubbed Donald Trump, an equally megalomaniacal, dictatorial, genocidal figure, the wrong way.
All of that may feel like vindication. All of that may feel deserved.
But beware of cheering when external powers become the arbiters of our internal reckoning. Beware of confusing geopolitical great games (or their latest avatars) with moral victory. Beware of outsourcing accountability, even symbolically, to Washington, Brussels, London, Beijing, Moscow, or any other capital that does not have to live with the consequences of what follows and that operates only for its short-term profit and long-term self-preservation. Beware of mistaking the weakening of one man for the strengthening of our institutions. Beware of the dangerous intoxication that comes from seeing your enemy humbled by forces you do not control.
Because Modi must fall, if he is to fall, by Indian hands, through Indian processes, under the full glare of Indian law and Indian democratic will. Anything else may remove a man, but it will wound the republic. And that is a price far too high, no matter how much one despises the man in question.
More context: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/16/politics/sir-trump-telltale-word-false
