India is not a democracy anymore.
2026 has become the year in which we see how much India is in shambles. It is the year we get to hear the cracks of a dying democracy and see the depth of these cracks through our eyes, for you pages and our cameras.
In July, we saw the swarm of students protesting at Jantar Mantar, in Mumbai and almost everywhere across India. Jantar Mantar has become a trigger word; you hear or read it, and you know some negative news is coming your way. Thousands of students were beaten, multiple people were detained, and several FIRs were filed, all for a single demand: a better education system for the youth of India. Asking for better education shouldn’t result in receiving pellet guns to your body, nor should peaceful protesting be answered with violence from police officials. Yet it happened, and Dharmendra Pradhan resigned. We don’t talk about how an RSS member was his replacement, but it will surely come around to bite us in the back.
Now, weeks later, we’re in this anomaly of an October heatwave: 38 degrees, with clips of women being beaten brutally by RSS goons and Delhi Police. Who dares to celebrate Navratri and dance for the goddess while tearing up the clothes of women fighting for their basic human rights? It is gruesome and shameful. This is what a cultural shock is, something the Prime Minister of India should learn.
To understand that nearly 13 crore voters were deleted from the world’s largest democracy is unnerving; to fight for such votes and receive an undeclared emergency in the state is even more disturbing. Such action lacks guts. Such actions also make one believe that the people in power are openly challenging the people who brought them to power. It makes me wonder: did Hitler have a hint that one day he would meet a cruel downfall, or did Mussolini know his actions would forever be used as examples of fascism? One thing is sure: the BJP’s tenure in India would go down as one of the worst times for Indian democracy. Maybe not in textbooks; their friends own every major institution and, of course, the internet
Gyanesh Kumar, the Chief Election Commissioner, is more suitable to be called a frenemy of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah and our major electricity providers (major funding providers, more like). It is always good to have our guy on the other side of the game, and the BJP doesn’t just have a single person; they have an entire team. The Election Commission wasn’t supposed to be some IPL team of Mumbai Indians. It used to be an independent body, and it has not been one for almost a decade now. What Gyanesh Kumar has shown the world is just the tip of the iceberg. CJI Surya Kant, the famous judicial expert, doesn’t take the issue of vote chori as something to be discussed in the Supreme Court. He said openly that law and order is not his domain. Okay, so could the multiple rapes of Indian women be taken up by the Supreme Court? No? Apparently not because the Indian courts only have slots to use the people’s tax money and talk about how much of a taboo street dogs are, but not about the men who traumatise girls for all their remaining lives. The CJI is so loyal, isn’t he? Qualities of the animal they were trying to kill earlier this year. Not even a best friend is that loyal, unless I’ve stuffed him with cash. Maybe that’s what happened.
Rahul Gandhi said that over 200 officials from the BJP had been in contact with him over the past few days. It was just money. Money doesn’t make you treat a deal like a seal of blood. The good thing is that you can always pull a Uno reverse; the people with money bellies can always lose it. Glow-ups aren’t that hard.
It’s like a game of ghar ghar, where you assign roles to all your friends. So did our Prime Minister when he enacted a law in 2023, granting legal protection to the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners. [The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023] Why was such protection granted to them? It goes down a rabbit hole.
A day passes, and we get to see Narendra Modi declaring India as the ‘mother of democracy’. Look around, There are civilians your employed policemen are actively beating and cruelly attacking for peacefully protesting. They officially changed the protest site from Jantar Mantar, Delhi, to a place where people are supposed to book and pay to protest. This is capitalism — the Prime Minister’s buddies do it well.
Will people forget this fight for democracy the way we all forgot Note Bandi in 2016? I still remember that only BJP supporters were unaffected, while the middle class was queuing up in banks to replace their rupee notes, scared and exhausted. The middle class is now on the roads, out in the open, because every pain has a limit. If you keep pushing on the vein, it will burst, and your face will be red
How many more thousands of men in beige, in their SUVs and vans, would be deployed just to hide the truth in a bag? It will explode. This country was born from a revolution, not even a century ago. What is to say it would not happen again? The blood of the freedom fighters is fresher in our skins than the paper Gandhis they stuffed in their palaces and penthouses. Until India is democratic again.
