August 23, 2025 • 56 mins
Clickbait-y title aside-- these are ominous times. Like a precursor to bad things, most folks dont think it will get so bad before it rapidly does. Let's hope this is not one of those. A ramble through just how possible a dictatorship is in India with lessons from Pakistani-history, who know a thing or two about this jig.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the Mind Your Buffalo podcast.
This is your host Ravikant aka the Buffalo Intellectual, and
I have a very clickbait title for you today. Is
India headed for a dictatorship or not? I mean, like
it is one of those and I'm just going to
go straight into it. It's one of those discussions which
like happened all the time. Like in fact, I grew
(00:24):
up in a generation where everybody's fantasy was that India
should paid dictatorship because they were all like, you know,
that's a problem with India, Kamara Pasna, like we have
coalition parties, that is a problem. There is a mixer
Car Milijivi, Lisa Car. You know, we need strong leader.
Like so in many which ways, I've written about this
at length in my book. Also, like Modi became that figure,
(00:47):
that fantasy figure for a lot of people who are like, yeah, yeah,
we need a strong government and all that. But we've
kind of come to the arc of the thing, right,
So in many which ways we've come to this point
in twenty twenty five, things are beginning to move very
quickly politically. In the last six months, there is a
(01:12):
lot which has kind of happened, and things look very
very precarious, Raoul Gan. These you know, revelations about findings
about the election electoral lists, you know, and they're weaponizing
it as votuary, and it's happening at the backdrop of
the Sir that is happening in Bihar where lacks of
(01:37):
names are being struck off the electoral list in the
name of revising the lists. And that's and that that
also happens. So there is all these questions about like
whether these are legitimate activities, what's going on In the
middle of it, the government just comes in with this
kind of new proposed amendment to which says that if
(01:59):
you're a chief minister, minister, prime minister even and if
you're arrested, and if you're in prison for more than
thirty days consecutively, then you automatically stop being the person.
I think the anxiety was, like, you know, the what
happened I think with Kjriwa or you know, other opposition
(02:20):
leaders Himansurin from Charcon had to resign before he went
to jail and le he obviously came out and things
like that, But like this the timing of this amendment,
you know why they're bringing it, and there's all this
anxiety that they will use it to weaponize, like, for instance,
if tomorrow, if it got passed, which it hasn't. If
(02:42):
it got past, then it will be like, let's arrest
month Aventergy for instance, and you put her in prison
for thirty two days, so on the thirty second day
or thirty first day, she automatically stops being the chief minister.
I mean, it's an interesting way of doing this. It
(03:02):
is an amendment, so b G people require a large
number of like you know, it would require. They don't
have the numbers to pass it basically, but the fact
that it brought this in such a hurried manner means
that they basically probably wanted to change the narrative which
was going out of their hand. The narrative was all
(03:24):
about votually legitimacy, and they've brought this to kind of
like go back to trying to because they know that
the moment they'll introduces, the Congress and the opposition will
fight this and they get to say, oh, look, these
people are trying to say that no matter how corrupt,
even if you're in prison, your monthly ship chair should
(03:47):
not go so it's a desperate attempt, in my opinion,
to kind of change the political narrative at a time
where they're really struggling. And while I've seen I've seen
people already starts speculating. They're like, oh, this is this
is the end of Moodie. Are things moving really fast?
And like, you know what happens? You know what happens
(04:10):
if Ifish loses Bihar for instance, you know we have
election is coming up and all of that, and Congress
is gaining momentum, RGD is doing pretty well. What happens
if Nish loses Bihar? What is the what is a
future hold then? Because remember without Nithish and Chad Naido
(04:32):
support like you know, twelve and sixteen MP's respectively. If
I'm not mistaken, the government like becomes very very very
dangerously close to falling because PGP doesn't have the numbers
it needs by itself in that sense. So there are
some people who are like already kind of gleefully looking
(04:54):
at it and they're like, oh, hey, this regime might
fall and all that. Actually it's tough like that, which
worries me, which brings me to the point of today's discussion.
Ken India, weir towards a dictatorship. And because you have
to understand like regimes which have built like like you know,
(05:15):
it is the way Movie has built power around himself.
Forget the opposition his own party members UH will be
very exposed or will be will not let him be right,
So it is it is like there are the way
they have centralized power, taken total control within their own
(05:39):
party and everything from foreign policy to within local UH
level elections within the BJP like state level, they se level,
district level goes through them. Right, So when you have
such total control over a party, you tend to make
a lot of people very unhappy. So the moment they
(06:00):
start like falling like it, it will not just be
the ouster of a party or one or two people,
It will be the overthrow of an entire way of
doing systems. Party might go against them. You know. We
tend to imagine political parties like these monoliths. Ke or
(06:21):
BJP is just one unit. No, there are many factions.
There are many cliques and many divisions and many lobbies
within the BJP itself, you know, and they are all
very hyper competitive. They're all often fighting each other, getting
in each other's way trying to undercut each other. It's
(06:44):
just that when the party is successful, when you have
power and when you are dominating, that all of these
contradictions are sort of put away on the side, or
they're covered up. But the moment you know there is
blood in the water, the sharks come. The moment uh,
you know, the center can't like you know, hold uh,
(07:07):
it really starts disrupting very quickly. And I think the
men in charge of this regime know that, know that
very well, which means they are not going to go
down without a fight. And what I mean by that
is the transition of power is unlikely to be very
(07:29):
very is likely to be very very messy. Now, what
Rahul Gandhi is kind of alleged is that there is
wide spread tempering with the electoral process. And in my
previous episode, I'd kind of talked about like, you know
how for the long longest time people were like evms, evms,
(07:53):
and I had I had gone on record and I'm
still on record saying I don't think it's the EVMS
because it just like it's just not feasible, right, like
the the the elaborate levels of you know, manipulation, and
total control it would take to go down that route
(08:16):
I didn't think was possible and into To be fair,
that's not what Ralan is saying either. He's not coming
out and saying evms are hacked. What he's saying is
something even more basic. He's saying, the lists are hacked.
You know, the way you're making the voter list is suspicion.
You know, names are getting added to it and the
(08:37):
names are getting deleted to it. And I said it
the last time also in my previous episode. If I'm
not wrong that if you delete names, if I'm a
voter and my name is not on the list, then
I will create like I will say something like the
opposition will be constantly watching out. It will become news.
(08:57):
So voter deletion is trickier, I would imagine. Then voter addition,
you can meet the kneja okay, like how many how
many people are voting? Like you know if they say that,
you know tomorrow in your neighborhood there were two thousand
and two hundred and seventeen votes. I actually don't know
if two two hundred and seventeen people live in my
(09:18):
neighborhood or if only nineteen hundred and eighty people live,
so that additional three hundred four hundred in a neighborhood
or in a muhalla is actually like if if you
did that, it would be difficult to kind of catch.
And that's what the Congress is kind of pointing out
(09:41):
that they have seemingly pulled this off, and they have
pulled it off on a massive, massive scale, and I
think it's a scale of it which is warning because again,
I often talk to people who are in election research,
(10:01):
who are observers of the political process, and I always
like the inner discussion, like, you know, the thing is like,
you have to assume that the ruling party has a
two to three percent advantage a command althought, but they
have it. You have to assume key, you know, because
(10:24):
of the incumbency and the party machinery, and you know
resources of the state, and when you're in power, you're
private to a lot of things and you know processes,
and the more strongly you're in power, the more that
percentage goes. But two to three percent, you you manketchelo
that you have an advantage. Right, So if I'm an
(10:44):
opposition party and I have to beat you, I don't
have to just beat you have to beat you by
more than three to five percent for it to actually
come out. And I think that reality everybody in India
kind of accepts. All political parties kind of accept and
like you know, they fight elections only like that that
it's not going to be like mankelo this this advantage
(11:08):
disadvantage is there, but uh and like they fight for it.
They will they will say that look, you know, election
commission or police or they're giving them permission for rallies
or they're looking the other way while we are making
all of that harassment of our candidates and all that,
all of that, they will they will raise a hue
and cry, but they understand this is how the process works.
(11:32):
So that is not what is being questioned. The cod
is being questioned is the kind of numbers that Alan
is alleging. This could lead to a ten to twelve
percent swing. Let's say ten to twelve percent swing is massive.
Is just massive because it means that the electoral process
(11:58):
is very, very heavily compromised. So the question then becomes
that what happens when you try to like when you
expose this right, like you know, now the people start checking,
Like now every opposition party, every journalist, every enemy that
(12:19):
you've made of, every institution, even the courts, the bureaucracy
that like bureaucracy also has these huge factions within them,
these teams, these cadders, like they have a you know,
their own way, like they won't fight in public, but
they have their own way of keeping track of things.
So all of these people like they will now be
(12:43):
very closely monitoring it, right, and your capacity to pull
it off again, right, You may not immediately lose, but
you can't now go back and do it like they
figured out what you're doing, and it your capacity to
go back and pull it off again disappears, right, which
(13:05):
means all subsequent future elections either you will expose yourself
or you no longer are walking in with that level
of advantage. And second of all, it means that all
the people who were collaborating with you, like Election commission
or whoever, let's assume that they were. You know, all
of this I'm saying is going with assumption. So like,
(13:26):
you know, please don't come file cases against me. I'm
not saying this is I'm just speculating about stuff which
is on the public domain in itself. So all the
people who are like sort of that in that scenario,
who would be collaborating with you. They would be collaborating
with you because they were assuming that they like nobody
will find out, like you know, but now the fact
(13:49):
is that they are also kind of exposed, and they're
also kind of culpable, so you know, they might also
themselves become a problem. Right, So it's no longer just
I can't do this again. It also means the people
who I was relying on and who I was collaborating
might flip, might might snitch, might you know, like all
kinds of things, like you know, what happens if somebody
(14:12):
brings a case against themselves an investigation something like, you know,
there are jarways this can play out, so it makes
everybody very uneasy, very nervous, very strenuous. Is like media
poking questions in you know, independent journalists. I don't mean
the go the media like, but there are independent journalists
who will be looking closely through things. So there's a
(14:33):
lot which will be going on right now, right in
situations like this, when the stability of that kind of
a centralized power structure is threatened, that's when uh, you know,
people in power start becoming desperate because really understand, there
is no like, like I was saying earlier in the episode,
(14:55):
if you are moody, if you're Shah, if you're these people,
and if you have come to power in a certain way,
like there is no gentleman's handshake saying Okay, well played,
you guys beat us. You know we've all democracy. You
know that's not what's gonna happen. You can't, you can't
(15:17):
gracefully hand the button and move out like there is
no endgame. You you're on this tiger. You have to
keep riding because a moment, like I said, there is
blood in the water. You know, sharks will come. So
your only option then becomes is to clamp down harder,
is to double down. Right, you can't be backing down,
(15:41):
you So when when you start losing the credibility and
the legitimacy, that's when you start pulling out all these
desperate measures. Like so like one has to then tend
to think where does this all head? And with that
content text, we can look at India where it is now.
(16:02):
Most Indians educated, you know, people who read stuff, who
consider themselves rational, not like you know, conspiracy mongering. They
will be like, oh, this is a ridiculous question. This
is like clearly one of these podcasters who are like, oh,
(16:23):
is India going to be a dictatorship? You know they
I agree, it sounds ridiculous. Okay, but hang on with
me for a second. India's only South Asian country which
has not had some form of authoritarian roule. Okay, Pakistan
has had it, Bangladesh has had it, Sri Lanka's had it,
(16:44):
Nepal has had it. In fact, South Asian region tends
to flip in that in that direction very very quickly.
And if you look at the pattern into what this happens,
if you like, let's say Pakistan is an interesting case study,
or even Bangladesh, same patterns, right, what tends to happen
(17:06):
which creates this kind of a disruption, Like why does
this suddenly come about? And I think, without oversimplifying, in
a lot of cases, like in Pakistan's case, you can
clearly see they've they've gone through multiple periods where civilian
rule is suspended, Like you know, uh, there's Ayu, there's
(17:27):
Zia Luck, There's I mean Yaya Khan. In between, there's
there's Musharraf. And in each of those cases if you
see like the beginnings are exactly kind of like this,
where there is a party in power which is beginning
to lose credibility, which is which doesn't want to kind
(17:48):
of gracefully hand power over. Like in the case of Pakistan,
there was a big you know, Punjabi versus Bengali kind
of friction. There was also within the West Pakistan unit
there was a very Sindhi versus Punjabi kind of a unit.
(18:09):
There was a whole Mohajir versus like you know, the
Punjabi system, and no branch was no group was willing
to kind of be like, okay, in the name of democracy,
find you guys, fair and square, go ahead, and nobody
wanted to give that away. So when you reach a
situation where people who are in those places don't want
(18:32):
to give it away, don't want to kind of play
by the rules of democracy, which means the rules of
the democracy is also if you lose, you go right
like you gracefully move out. And when you don't do that,
that's when you start thinking of what are my options?
You know what if I don't want to go, who's
gonna throw me out? Like it'll have to be some
(18:55):
form of you know, police or army, right, So what
are my relations and ships with the police in the army?
Do I do I know anybody there? Do we have
some kind of h ideological affinity? Do we have some
kind of shared ambition? You know? Is there a role
that I can kind of create for the person who
(19:15):
can then deliver me that security? Because if I left
to the people in the processes, I'm moving out right
or I'm going to lose my capacity to control my
own party, you know, in that sense, And that's when
the mind struts going in that direction. I was I
was listening to this real uh this uh everybody's favorite
(19:36):
journalist tragedy service. I he was narrating the story about
Amashah's first election, like as a student leader. He was
in a b v P. I don't know whether the
story is true or not. I just heard rajis as
I talk about it. Where uh Shai is fighting this
college election. He's a he's a student himself, and they
(19:57):
realize that there are a lot of women voters in
the in the in the in the college, and if
the women voters vote, then he will lose. I Like
how even back in the day, like Amisha was like, okay,
women will not vote for me, Like I don't inspire
confidence from the women voters. You know, he was fighting
(20:18):
against I think a Congress student leader n s u I,
n s Ui job Hanki. Maybe the Congress had a
female candidate. But like even then, like women will not
vote for Amit cha that something's never changed, right, So
I'm kidding like whatever, because somebody will quickly point out
that there are a lot of women from BJP and
(20:42):
RSS who clearly vote for it. But anyways, like for
the joke to work, like Amisha is like fighting and
he's like, oh, there are all these women and they
will vote against me and I will lose the election.
So a day before the election, in the story as
narrated by Rajibsadasai, him and his friends call up the
(21:02):
parents of the girls and say, don't send your daughter
to college tomorrow because it's election day. Some something bad
can happen. There might be trouble, and it's a contested election.
So a lot of parents didn't send their daughters to
college the next day, thereby ensuring that he won because
like these women didn't come to college, they didn't vote.
(21:24):
Right now, whether that story is true or fully true
or not true or whatever is not the point. I'm
just saying. If it is, if I have to take
that story at face value, it reveals a very interesting mindset.
Like right from the beginning, you're you're not fighting fair
like you know, and I know, like somebody will be like, O,
(21:45):
elections are nothing about fairness. Yeah, I know, I know
all of that. But this mindset itself is like, let's
let's like there are there are strategies and tactics in
elections where you will try to like there's no fairness,
you will you will play dirty and all that. There
is all of that, But this is like let's, uh,
(22:08):
if like we're playing chess on electoral board, like let's
let's let's throw the board over you. You turn the
board over like you you you reset the whole thing,
like you go completely out there right and in in
ways which is it is not really illegal, but it
truly sort of uh extends and breaks the legitimacy of
(22:33):
the process in many ways. And bear in mind that
person or has had now a foty your political career
after that moment, uh, and is now the home minister.
And like right from the days when Moody and Share
like in Kujurat, you know, and A Mitcha was the
(22:55):
Home Minister and Modi was the Chief Minister, there was
already a lot of heat on them. BJP is a
party itself, did not trust either of them at that
point in time. Modes rise from Gujara Chief ministership to
becoming their national candidate itself was not a foregone conclusion.
Now people forget this, but as late as twenty twelve,
(23:19):
twenty thirteen, even you know, there were many people within
the BJP who were like, no, Movie is not going
to be our prime minister. He will face right And
you know, if someone like promote Mahajan for instant who
you know, like that was a freaky death. If promote
Marjin who was young and who was like clearly the
(23:42):
favored rising star within the party, if someone like that
had been around in this period, like it could have
looked very different. So Movies rise is like like a
lot of factors. But credit to him, he seized it
because he's already in twenty eleven, twelve thirteen in a
(24:03):
place in Gojra where either he has to go for
the big one in New Delhi or in five six
years he's finished his own party will kind of like
sideline him because he's playing too aggressively. He's he's moving
too many pieces around, and to his credit, he goes
for it and he successfully wins, and Amicha still doesn't
(24:24):
have the full trust of the party because because then
he's remember he didn't become Home minister right away. He
becomes like he's put in charge of the party and
then like he famously delivers Uttar Pradesh in the Uttar
Pradesh with answer by elections, which happens a few years
I think twenty seventeen, that really cemented his reputation as Okay,
(24:47):
this guy is like, you know, can can deliver the results,
and that is really the coming together and eventually, you know,
twenty nineteen elections and A Micha is now the Home
Minister has been for a while. So for them, I
think both Shy and Moody, the entire paradigm has been
(25:09):
go big or go home. Right, So if now they're
at the stage where they're being kind of you know,
called in, it becomes difficult maybe for them to climb
back down. So how do you go big beyond this? Like,
you know, you already run everything, and your capacity to
(25:31):
keep running things is being questioned. So what other option
do you have at this point is an important question.
And if you look up like the way, like I
was saying, how dictatorships have actually taken hold in other
parts of South Asia, you know, these are comparable cultures,
(25:52):
and I know everything is not as in comparable cultures
and comparable social relations. Pakistan is actual very interesting because
a lot of the people within the Pakistani political class
historically they actually dislike the political system. In fact, for
(26:12):
a lot of these it sector educated, you know, techie
people like you know, they would really actually they were
really gel well with a lot of the Pakistani ruling
elite from the seventies, eighties, nineties, even two thousands, because
(26:34):
they were all saying the same thing that, you know,
poor people should not have the right to vote. And
I think mushaff even did elections where he said, like
minimum college degrees needed, you can't vote otherwise. They mistrusted
grassroot leaders, they mistrusted like you know, all of these
politics of bargaining, of negotiating, and they all fantasized about
(26:56):
creating a new political class you know of you know,
and they all thought it could be done top down.
So the whole idea was to do it top down.
The whole idea was, you know, we will create a
new political class. I think you tried to do that.
He when he takes over, when the military takes over
in Pakistan for the first time, he is he is
(27:19):
actually trying to do land reform in Pakistan. He's also
creating he suspends political parties. But all that means is
political candidates now run as independents. You know, the it's
not so difficulty can wish them away. So you know,
he's he's trying. He doesn't like the political parties. He
doesn't like the political leaders for good reason because you know,
(27:41):
his usual complaints are corrupt, their self serving, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. So his solution is to then
create a new kind of voting class, you know, a
new kind of system. You know, he's passing all these
rules where he's saying all political party have to declare
(28:01):
their income every year. Ni karagita, I will ban you
when all leaders internal elections. He's trying to do all
of these things. None of it actually works. It just
eventually destabilizes more and more and more, because one of
the main problems in Pakistan in the nineteen sixties is
they really don't want to share power with the Bengalis.
(28:25):
And then post seventy one, if you see again during
Ziaulhak's rain, like you know, zia Ulac again comes to power,
he overthrows Bhutto and like he comes to power, and
he is also doing the same thing. And Ziaulak is
(28:45):
actually you know, quoting and he starts leaning towards the
Islamizing factions within Pakistan, like he leans towards all these
religious fundamentalists, and he starts passing his reforms or his
rule like he wants to legitimize it through religious authority
(29:06):
because he doesn't have the electoral authority, you know. So
sounds very similar like where he's like, oh, Islam killer,
I'm doing this and so on and so forth, and
he's jailing people, he's torturing people. The entire system kind
of like like disrupts. But again he is someone who
(29:29):
is also very suspicious of the political class, but he
can't really recreate the momentum keeps coming from the ground up.
And then again in the Musharaff years, Musharaff again tries
the same thing again where he's like, oh, all these
politicians are corrupt, and you know, Benazir Bhutto is in
(29:49):
exile and navashari If is exiled. And then he himself
starts his own party. You know, does musharaff because he's saying, oh,
the whole process is that these political parties are the problem, right,
And he tries to create a new kind of an
electorate and he tries his new party and yeah, like
(30:12):
it gets rejected again, like you know, it goes out
for the voting test and again like a fractured mandate comes.
And what I'm trying to say is that in all
of these case studies, and you can look at elections
in in Sri Lanka and you know, Bangladesh has has
had military coups, currently doesn't have an elected government. It's
(30:35):
hoping to transition into one. What you try to see
the pattern is actually very similar like regimes once they
lose credibility. Shae Hasina is another very great example of this.
She had near total control over all these institutions economy
(30:57):
and like culture and like you know, people like Shakibul
Hassan for instance, like Banglad probably Bangladesh's best ever cricket talent,
right cricketing talent at Shakibul Hassan uh and and Bangladesh
is a very cricket mad country and he's like their
best cricketing talent. And he's basically been in exile for
(31:21):
the last two years. He can't he he I don't
think he lives in Bangladesh. Also now since ever since
the Sheikh Hasinaku kind of she got overthrown, I think
he lives in Dubai and he no longer plays for Bangladesh.
And uh, you know, he's just he's just out of
out of the whole thing. Like that's how much reached
Sheik Casina had like from cricket to like people in
(31:45):
her party controlled the Bangladesh cricket board. Uh. They were
in you know, culture, they were in arts, they were
in economy, they were in every facet of political control
that you can imagine. Uh, they were, they were like
nearly invincible. She had actually dismissed the op like you know,
(32:06):
she ran the last election, uh, practically uncontested because the
other parties like didn't participate in the election or like whatever.
Like the elections were not very free I could be
missing some details. Don't come at me with like no,
actually this was a thing. But basically she was nearly
fully in charge and then a collapse happens very quickly.
(32:30):
And in the case of Bangladesh currently it is not
a military ruler. It is it's it's a very interesting
model for South Asia, which we've actually not seen where
you overthrow a politician like that and the military does
not take charge. Instead they've put like this, uh, you know,
Nobel laureate, like this senior guy as the face of
(32:54):
the government. I don't know enough about. I haven't like
I don't track Bangladesh as those as I track maybe Pakistan.
So I don't really know what's going on in the
sense who's really in charge and who's really because this guy,
you know, you know, see he is not has never
been the kind of person who can pull this off
(33:17):
by by his own this is not his He's probably
the respectable face, consensus candidate, but like from what I'm
sensing now, there is impatience with him. Also, they're like, Okay,
this dude needs to do elections and you know, move
on and change things around. So my point is when
things collapse, they collapse very quickly, right, and ground mobilizations
(33:42):
are very key, and they and these kind of shifts
and changes come from nowhere. So there are two or
three forces we need to kind of really look at.
One is the people in charge. When they start becoming desperate,
they start looking for what options they have, right, And
(34:05):
we've seen this in India, right, Like Indra Gandhi calling
for the emergency was in many many cases very similar,
Like suddenly she was beginning to feel the walls close in,
too many things happening, so she declares the emergency. I
think one of the reasons, one of the reasons why
(34:27):
I personally, this is my theory, why she removed the
emergency is because she comes from the family who's like
sort of neo royalty, right, like it is there, Like
you know, her father is Jabal l A Leru, and
you know she herself grew up during the freedom movement,
and I think it was a very big burden on
(34:47):
her self to leave a legacy of having disrupted electoral democracy.
Like she comes from a generation which saw the freedom struggle,
participated in it. Her has this great legacy. A grandfather
had this legacy, and now she's like a very strong
prime minister, and then she calls for the emergency and
(35:10):
like to if she doesn't flip it back, then she's
she's basically disrupting that thing. So I think it may
have been a very big It's not as simple as that.
I think it may have been a very big factor. Also,
I think and I was really I've read some of these,
some of the commentaries from the era of some great
(35:31):
books have come on emergency last four or five years.
I think she also had faulty intelligence. I think like
her intelligence people had kind of led her to believe
that if she did elections she would do much better.
And I think she she kind of overestimated that element
(35:52):
of it and underestimated just how much. And that tends
to happen in dictatorial regimes. You you know, of all
the ugly, messy protests that Tamasha that you don't like,
it is actually a very real good method of understanding
the pain points in a system. You might not like
(36:13):
dealing with it every day if you're a politician or
a ruling ruler, but you at least can see where
the pain points are when you threaten and intimidate and
wipe everything away, and like like put people away, like
people will like suddenly not stop feeling the pain. They
will be in pain, but they will just not come
out and tell you. So the moment you remove the
(36:36):
barriers like it will you're going into it blind, is
what I'm saying. So I think in that sense, Indra
and Moodie are different because for her it's like it
was a family project, right, it was a personal project
Indian democracy. Whereas these guys have come from the opposite tradition.
(36:57):
They are not from the They're not the party which
fought for the independence. They are in fact the parallel
tradition of you know, uh, the Savanna mobilization. Right, so
there's there is the the Gandhian Congress mobilization which uh,
which which post independence became like this client patron kind
(37:24):
of a thing where they took over all the institutions.
So the British became the new ruling class. And in
many which ways, even now, if you go into like
many parts of North India, actually even South India, you
will still find hardcore congresses because many ways they are
they're coming from that tradition and uh, the Jana Sung
and then later the BJP is the opposite tradition. They
(37:46):
they were really small players. They had pockets of influence
mostly in Central India and MP and you know, pockets
of Rajasthan, you know, some parts of like urban Pune
and all that, and and they came out of that tradition,
like they've slowly built their RSS network across India wherever
(38:08):
it was necessary. They like, it is a grassroots movement.
Whether you like it or not, it is a it
is a very long term mobilization. There is there are
there are generations of like there would be a generation
of Sanghi, you know, like who who was born in
the shaka, worked all their life in the shaka, built
it up, you know, set up these systems, you know,
(38:30):
and they have they have they've done that, like they've
they've grew out of that. And I think somewhere in
the nineties, late eighties, nineties, and like lots of commentaries
on it, the Saarana mobilization shifts from Congress to this
this new thing. So that parallel tradition exists. And if
Rahul Gandhi is to become a prime minister, that shift
(38:53):
has to happen again. And here's the interesting element of it.
I think while that transition was happening away from the Congress,
Rajiv Gandhi gets assassinated. So there is a there is
a gap in the in the Congress machinery, right Rajiv Gandhi.
(39:14):
We have no idea how he lived, how the politics
of the nineties would have turned out. We have no
idea how he would have done, like like he was
not a fan of Mundel politics by the way he was, Like,
we don't know how Congress would have fed, whether it
would have been relevant or not. But like without Rajiv Gandhi,
(39:37):
and until Sonya Gandhi starts coming into the picture in
early two thousands, late nineties, the Congress is basically being
run by you know tier two leadership, you know which
which always knew that they will be number two to
Indira Sanjai Raji. When all of these guys and now
(39:58):
suddenly like you know, they are in charge, they were
trying to figure out who will be basically you know,
leading the pack. So you have Sharad Pawar, you have
Narce Marau, you have Sitaram Kaseri, you have all these
regional leaders. Everyone's trying to figure out, like what's the
best way to go uh, you know, within this, within
this vacuum, and I think somewhere within that, you know,
(40:22):
Congress started losing its traditional base, which started shifting towards BJP,
which which started seeming more and more like the reliable
underdog which dissolves its chance in the you know, sun
which dissolves is short. So that that kind of filip happened.
Now it seems we are coming in twenty twenty five,
(40:43):
twenty twenty six, in the next few years, that flip
is again coming back, where like a lot of that
base that Sawara mobilization, the consolidation, you know, is beginning
to say, okay, if we tried Mody, we tried BJP,
things are really not like some of some things are okay,
but like things are really not very good. Also, you know,
(41:03):
there is a nostalgia for the Congress, which which never
truly went away. By the way, there were questions ten
years ago about Rahulai's ability. He was seen as an
out of touch fourth generation dynast. But like he's really
come into his own. He's he's paid paid the dues
as they say, he's walked across India literally and now
(41:27):
he comes off as like a seasoned, grizzled veteran who's
taken all the punches and now he's now he's counter attacking.
So there is this feeling, there is this growing vibe
that Okay, now, now let's let's give him a chance. Right,
he's earned his part. And these guys they had their
run the BJP and they had ten years. Now these
(41:49):
guys are aging RT like, let's try this out. So
I think some of that shift is happening. What is
very interesting now is how will that transition happen. Like
I said, is a very different kind of formation, Like
it's the same thing, but like it's the same sourana
centric mobilization, but it was always rooted in the family.
(42:10):
It was already rooted in the families in the center.
And then there will be the second tier leadership who
are basically working as also the it's a hubin spoke
model as who are also the second tier leaders are
also like the core and like they have their third
tier and so on and so on. And I think
when the shift happens in the nineties, the congress doesn't
(42:30):
really have a strong core in the party. Sorry, in
the family. BJP is not a family oriented party. It
is a organizational setup which has been in many which
was last ten years centralized under the leadership of Modi,
And so he's the main guy now. So unless he
(42:52):
falls really unwell or you know, untimely, you know, gets
goes out of action, he seems very much you know,
healthy lucid. He's doesn't seem to have any medical issues
that we know of. He's not going to be very
(43:13):
easy to hand over power. So you're dealing with more
like Indra in the mid nineteen seventies situation where she's
seeing the wall, where he's also seeing the walls close in.
He's also seeing his own party start to like chump
at the bits. All the usual tricks that he tried
(43:33):
are not working anymore, and even the things which worked
for him, Like there's also bad timing, like Donald Trump
has suddenly gone rogue on him. Like Donald Trump was
his personal sort of like equation he had built. And
when Trump came back to power for the second time,
I'm sure he would have expected, like, oh, this is
(43:54):
going to work well for me. It's actually worked much worse.
And if a Democrat was in power, entire Indian foreign
policy of the last seventy eight years has been told
to shreds this idea that India would be in the
American camp. The Americans have really, really, you know, put
(44:15):
that to test. So now suddenly you're seeing you know,
India scrambling to come closer to Russia, come closer to China,
and you know, we're we're, we're, we're, Like the regime
looks very shocked with how the Americans have dealt So
that has come back in a major way in embarrassed
(44:36):
the government. So I think there are some of these
things which are just catching up, and he's feeling the
walls close in. And for people like Na in the Modi,
for people like Amsha, what how do they react when
that happens? Are they going to sit back in their
chair and go like, well, we had a good run, guys,
(44:56):
we had a good run. Like we were peripheral players
in Jura, remember, like nobody like Koja was a congress state,
and we went all the way from to come into
power and we ran this and we we removed Article
three seventy, We built the dam on their welda. We
(45:16):
had a good innings. Now powner shifting, I'm too tired
for this, and let's let's let the chips fall where
they may. That's not going to happen, right, So this
is where you start really thinking, Okay, who what options
do they have? Right? Either you will start and I
(45:40):
hope i'm fully totally completely wrong. But if this starts intensifying,
and if the Bihar election heats up, and if it
starts losing narrative, you have to remember next couple of
years and very high voltage elections coming up. Bengal goes
toward Lot, goes to ward, Gujurad goes to vote ral Gan.
(46:03):
He has already gone to the Parliament and he's pointed
out the BJP and said, oh, we are beating you
in Gujarad the next time. And he's quietly done a
lot of reorganization within the Kujurat. I think the Congress.
He understands that the problem with the Congress in Gujurat
is see, even when Congress has been losing, even during
peak movie years when he was Chief minister, Congress is
(46:25):
getting thirty seven percent vote in Kujurat. That is not
a joke, right. It's a two party state. Mostly BJP
gets forty forty five percent, Congress is getting thirty seven
thirty eight percent thirty seven thirty eight percent vote is
no joke. And I think what has happened is he's
he's not very confident of his own Congress party machinery
(46:49):
in Gujarat anymore because the way these guys operate away,
the BJP operates maybe raul gandi in the Congress people.
And I've heard some people say this that they suspect
that a lot of them have been co opted by
the BJP And to win in a state like Gujrat
for the Congress, like, you can't be in a in
(47:12):
a friendly fight with the BJP. You have to really
be aria par And he's looking for rebuilding the party
because all the old timers in Congress Kujrath Unit are
in some way state shape firm doing business with the BGP.
Like if you're out of power. Congress has been out
(47:33):
of power in Kujurat for almost twenty years to more
than that. Right when you're out of power for that long,
you have to sort of bargain with the ruling party
because you're a politician in a state where you're in
opposition for twenty five years, which means all your businesses,
all your you know, commercial interests, all your personal life,
(47:55):
dirty laundry, like everything is fully open to the regime
and has been for the last two eighty years. They're
too powerful, so you have to kind of cooperate with
them a little bit. And I think what has made
it very clear to the Gujarat unit decides to stop
and I think he's rebuilding. I think the next Gujarat
election might be very interesting. Up is obviously the big
(48:17):
one everyone's gonna look look at, but utra current will
also go to elections. These are some very big ticket
things which are coming up and in many of which ways.
If these don't start playing out like the way the
regime thinks, and especially if voter manipulation, voter list manipulation
(48:37):
was a gig that they were playing and now they
can't really do it as efficiently, Oh it can. It
can flip very quickly in that scenario. What options do
they have? They You may start seeing arrest of opposition members.
(48:59):
You may start seeing executive order laws being passed which
are very random, which criminalize certain kind of political opposition. Already,
you're seeing sedition level charges or very serious charges being
brought up against journalists like you know, Sadarajan, and all
(49:23):
of these like the wire guys, and basically you're writing
critically against p JP, so you might start seeing like
a lot more intensity to this. Like I with my friends,
I like I have this very dark joke where I
keep telling them that, like, you know, subquo fascism, fascism,
(49:45):
like this is not what fascism looks like, you know, actually,
like it's it's very pleasant for what fascism is because
they're really not like breaking down the doors and kicking
skulls a unless you're like you know, Muslims or schedule
cast or whatever in certain pockets, they're really not doing
(50:08):
it to English speaking upper cast critiques of the regime.
When that starts happening, that's when you realize, oh, they
are really now turning up the heat, and I have
a feeling that may start happening, you know, like police action,
and like it will start like that. It will be
police action. It will be like a like serious cases,
(50:32):
people being beaten up, people being arrested, disappeared, Like you
can keep going to the courts, Like a lot of
people will be like, oh, our court system is very strong,
it is it really you know, courts may fight back.
People will like there's resilience in South Asian politics. And
one of the things about India is our grassroots mobilization
has always been very strong. It's not so easy to
(50:55):
do these things. But I'm just playing out of what
if scenario, Hence the question is it possible if it
were to happen, This is how I imagine it would happen. Okay,
Like you might see a large scale arrests, you might
start seeing strange laws getting passed, uh, and you might
(51:16):
start seeing a lot of disruption being normalized. You know,
gangs of people will suddenly like stop things, stop discussions,
people starting to a lot more people will start going
to at least face legal charges or mob intimidation or
(51:38):
cases or arrests for social media posts. Like I know
this is already happening, but like at a much higher level,
like you know, and when you when you when you
do that at a higher level, people will fight back
also with a higher level. Like you start arresting politicians,
you start like beating up journalists, you start throwing people
(51:59):
in jail for or Twitter and Facebook posts. There will
be backlash also, And when that backlash comes from the people,
that's when you call in you know, the Rapid Action Force,
the CRPF, the God forbid the army, and that's when
we really need to find out what the core of
(52:22):
the armed forces is. Armed forces in India have so
far in seventy years, not displayed any interest in taking
political sites. But if it comes to that, then what
does achieve to my understanding is I don't think the
(52:44):
armed forces will we are in the danger of an
armed forces takeover. I don't think so. Because in the
case of like, let's say Pakistan, like the first time
it happened, there was a like the Pakistani Army music
predominantly a Punjabi army, and they didn't want They wondered
(53:04):
what would happen if there was Bengali leadership. Right in
this case, it's slightly different because here, even if you
remove BJP and put in the Congress or an India
Alliance government, from the armed forces perspective, it really is
not a change to the fabric of how they see
(53:25):
the nation. It is civilian rule and it has gone
through civilian process. They don't really feel the need to intervene.
But however, if the regime starts, you know, taking liberties
with how they're dealing with opposition and pushback from the people, which,
like I said, they're unlikely to quietly take it and
(53:47):
retire with grace. So at that point, what does the
military apparatus or the paramilitary apparatus of the state thing
what do they start feeling Like, do they start feeling uneasy? Like, Okay,
the civilian processes are like falling apart, we need to
step in and restore order, like we don't want to
(54:09):
run things, but like they're literally like having street battles
every ten days. This is not good. We need to
kind of remember that's how it also began in Pakistan,
by the way, So I'm not saying that's what it
will go down as, but I'm just like posing what
(54:31):
if scenario? Can it happen? I don't know, I'm just
asking some questions. I hope this episode doesn't get flagged
or banned or whatever, because I don't think I have
said anything that this is going to happen or this
is happening. I'm clarifying very clearly, I'm just asking, speculating
(54:51):
if such things can happen. Right, And as an academic,
as a person who looks at cultural commentary and often
wonders about the journey of the Nation. This is something
that whether we should it's very scary, and I hope,
like I'm completely wrong, and good times prevail and we
all go to watch the next Sharukun movie together and
(55:14):
we forget this whole precarious episode and we laugh. He
remember we joked about, you know, and like there is
IPL twenty four to seven and we're art. Colie makes
a comeback to the test team and Thala you know,
plays in IPL forever and we hope that's how it is.
(55:36):
And on that good note, cheery note, thank you everybody
for listening. I hope none of us get arrested. Bye bye, Hey,
you finished the whole episode. Well done. I can't believe
you can tolerate my voice for so long. But in
case you like what you heard, you consider also joining
(55:57):
for the exclusive episode that I do for my paying subscribers,
because that show gets into slightly as your topics and
I don't really want to put it out in the
public domain. It's available on the patrech as well as
on YouTube through the join option, And in case you
don't want to drop extra money, I completely understand. Please
(56:19):
keep listening to my regular show. I'm grateful as ever.
There's a buy me a Coffee link in case you
want to drop some love. Otherwise, just have a nice day,
stay being awesome by bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the Mind Your Buffalo podcast.
This is your host Ravikant aka the Buffalo Intellectual, and
I have a very clickbait title for you today. Is
India headed for a dictatorship or not? I mean, like
it is one of those and I'm just going to
go straight into it. It's one of those discussions which
like happened all the time. Like in fact, I grew
(00:24):
up in a generation where everybody's fantasy was that India
should paid dictatorship because they were all like, you know,
that's a problem with India, Kamara Pasna, like we have
coalition parties, that is a problem. There is a mixer
Car Milijivi, Lisa Car. You know, we need strong leader.
Like so in many which ways, I've written about this
at length in my book. Also, like Modi became that figure,
(00:47):
that fantasy figure for a lot of people who are like, yeah, yeah,
we need a strong government and all that. But we've
kind of come to the arc of the thing, right,
So in many which ways we've come to this point
in twenty twenty five, things are beginning to move very
quickly politically. In the last six months, there is a
(01:12):
lot which has kind of happened, and things look very
very precarious, Raoul Gan. These you know, revelations about findings
about the election electoral lists, you know, and they're weaponizing
it as votuary, and it's happening at the backdrop of
the Sir that is happening in Bihar where lacks of
(01:37):
names are being struck off the electoral list in the
name of revising the lists. And that's and that that
also happens. So there is all these questions about like
whether these are legitimate activities, what's going on In the
middle of it, the government just comes in with this
kind of new proposed amendment to which says that if
(01:59):
you're a chief minister, minister, prime minister even and if
you're arrested, and if you're in prison for more than
thirty days consecutively, then you automatically stop being the person.
I think the anxiety was, like, you know, the what
happened I think with Kjriwa or you know, other opposition
(02:20):
leaders Himansurin from Charcon had to resign before he went
to jail and le he obviously came out and things
like that, But like this the timing of this amendment,
you know why they're bringing it, and there's all this
anxiety that they will use it to weaponize, like, for instance,
if tomorrow, if it got passed, which it hasn't. If
(02:42):
it got past, then it will be like, let's arrest
month Aventergy for instance, and you put her in prison
for thirty two days, so on the thirty second day
or thirty first day, she automatically stops being the chief minister.
I mean, it's an interesting way of doing this. It
(03:02):
is an amendment, so b G people require a large
number of like you know, it would require. They don't
have the numbers to pass it basically, but the fact
that it brought this in such a hurried manner means
that they basically probably wanted to change the narrative which
was going out of their hand. The narrative was all
(03:24):
about votually legitimacy, and they've brought this to kind of
like go back to trying to because they know that
the moment they'll introduces, the Congress and the opposition will
fight this and they get to say, oh, look, these
people are trying to say that no matter how corrupt,
even if you're in prison, your monthly ship chair should
(03:47):
not go so it's a desperate attempt, in my opinion,
to kind of change the political narrative at a time
where they're really struggling. And while I've seen I've seen
people already starts speculating. They're like, oh, this is this
is the end of Moodie. Are things moving really fast?
And like, you know what happens? You know what happens
(04:10):
if Ifish loses Bihar for instance, you know we have
election is coming up and all of that, and Congress
is gaining momentum, RGD is doing pretty well. What happens
if Nish loses Bihar? What is the what is a
future hold then? Because remember without Nithish and Chad Naido
(04:32):
support like you know, twelve and sixteen MP's respectively. If
I'm not mistaken, the government like becomes very very very
dangerously close to falling because PGP doesn't have the numbers
it needs by itself in that sense. So there are
some people who are like already kind of gleefully looking
(04:54):
at it and they're like, oh, hey, this regime might
fall and all that. Actually it's tough like that, which
worries me, which brings me to the point of today's discussion.
Ken India, weir towards a dictatorship. And because you have
to understand like regimes which have built like like you know,
(05:15):
it is the way Movie has built power around himself.
Forget the opposition his own party members UH will be
very exposed or will be will not let him be right,
So it is it is like there are the way
they have centralized power, taken total control within their own
(05:39):
party and everything from foreign policy to within local UH
level elections within the BJP like state level, they se level,
district level goes through them. Right, So when you have
such total control over a party, you tend to make
a lot of people very unhappy. So the moment they
(06:00):
start like falling like it, it will not just be
the ouster of a party or one or two people,
It will be the overthrow of an entire way of
doing systems. Party might go against them. You know. We
tend to imagine political parties like these monoliths. Ke or
(06:21):
BJP is just one unit. No, there are many factions.
There are many cliques and many divisions and many lobbies
within the BJP itself, you know, and they are all
very hyper competitive. They're all often fighting each other, getting
in each other's way trying to undercut each other. It's
(06:44):
just that when the party is successful, when you have
power and when you are dominating, that all of these
contradictions are sort of put away on the side, or
they're covered up. But the moment you know there is
blood in the water, the sharks come. The moment uh,
you know, the center can't like you know, hold uh,
(07:07):
it really starts disrupting very quickly. And I think the
men in charge of this regime know that, know that
very well, which means they are not going to go
down without a fight. And what I mean by that
is the transition of power is unlikely to be very
(07:29):
very is likely to be very very messy. Now, what
Rahul Gandhi is kind of alleged is that there is
wide spread tempering with the electoral process. And in my
previous episode, I'd kind of talked about like, you know
how for the long longest time people were like evms, evms,
(07:53):
and I had I had gone on record and I'm
still on record saying I don't think it's the EVMS
because it just like it's just not feasible, right, like
the the the elaborate levels of you know, manipulation, and
total control it would take to go down that route
(08:16):
I didn't think was possible and into To be fair,
that's not what Ralan is saying either. He's not coming
out and saying evms are hacked. What he's saying is
something even more basic. He's saying, the lists are hacked.
You know, the way you're making the voter list is suspicion.
You know, names are getting added to it and the
(08:37):
names are getting deleted to it. And I said it
the last time also in my previous episode. If I'm
not wrong that if you delete names, if I'm a
voter and my name is not on the list, then
I will create like I will say something like the
opposition will be constantly watching out. It will become news.
(08:57):
So voter deletion is trickier, I would imagine. Then voter addition,
you can meet the kneja okay, like how many how
many people are voting? Like you know if they say that,
you know tomorrow in your neighborhood there were two thousand
and two hundred and seventeen votes. I actually don't know
if two two hundred and seventeen people live in my
(09:18):
neighborhood or if only nineteen hundred and eighty people live,
so that additional three hundred four hundred in a neighborhood
or in a muhalla is actually like if if you
did that, it would be difficult to kind of catch.
And that's what the Congress is kind of pointing out
(09:41):
that they have seemingly pulled this off, and they have
pulled it off on a massive, massive scale, and I
think it's a scale of it which is warning because again,
I often talk to people who are in election research,
(10:01):
who are observers of the political process, and I always
like the inner discussion, like, you know, the thing is like,
you have to assume that the ruling party has a
two to three percent advantage a command althought, but they
have it. You have to assume key, you know, because
(10:24):
of the incumbency and the party machinery, and you know
resources of the state, and when you're in power, you're
private to a lot of things and you know processes,
and the more strongly you're in power, the more that
percentage goes. But two to three percent, you you manketchelo
that you have an advantage. Right, So if I'm an
(10:44):
opposition party and I have to beat you, I don't
have to just beat you have to beat you by
more than three to five percent for it to actually
come out. And I think that reality everybody in India
kind of accepts. All political parties kind of accept and
like you know, they fight elections only like that that
it's not going to be like mankelo this this advantage
(11:08):
disadvantage is there, but uh and like they fight for it.
They will they will say that look, you know, election
commission or police or they're giving them permission for rallies
or they're looking the other way while we are making
all of that harassment of our candidates and all that,
all of that, they will they will raise a hue
and cry, but they understand this is how the process works.
(11:32):
So that is not what is being questioned. The cod
is being questioned is the kind of numbers that Alan
is alleging. This could lead to a ten to twelve
percent swing. Let's say ten to twelve percent swing is massive.
Is just massive because it means that the electoral process
(11:58):
is very, very heavily compromised. So the question then becomes
that what happens when you try to like when you
expose this right, like you know, now the people start checking,
Like now every opposition party, every journalist, every enemy that
(12:19):
you've made of, every institution, even the courts, the bureaucracy
that like bureaucracy also has these huge factions within them,
these teams, these cadders, like they have a you know,
their own way, like they won't fight in public, but
they have their own way of keeping track of things.
So all of these people like they will now be
(12:43):
very closely monitoring it, right, and your capacity to pull
it off again, right, You may not immediately lose, but
you can't now go back and do it like they
figured out what you're doing, and it your capacity to
go back and pull it off again disappears, right, which
(13:05):
means all subsequent future elections either you will expose yourself
or you no longer are walking in with that level
of advantage. And second of all, it means that all
the people who were collaborating with you, like Election commission
or whoever, let's assume that they were. You know, all
of this I'm saying is going with assumption. So like,
(13:26):
you know, please don't come file cases against me. I'm
not saying this is I'm just speculating about stuff which
is on the public domain in itself. So all the
people who are like sort of that in that scenario,
who would be collaborating with you. They would be collaborating
with you because they were assuming that they like nobody
will find out, like you know, but now the fact
(13:49):
is that they are also kind of exposed, and they're
also kind of culpable, so you know, they might also
themselves become a problem. Right, So it's no longer just
I can't do this again. It also means the people
who I was relying on and who I was collaborating
might flip, might might snitch, might you know, like all
kinds of things, like you know, what happens if somebody
(14:12):
brings a case against themselves an investigation something like, you know,
there are jarways this can play out, so it makes
everybody very uneasy, very nervous, very strenuous. Is like media
poking questions in you know, independent journalists. I don't mean
the go the media like, but there are independent journalists
who will be looking closely through things. So there's a
(14:33):
lot which will be going on right now, right in
situations like this, when the stability of that kind of
a centralized power structure is threatened, that's when uh, you know,
people in power start becoming desperate because really understand, there
is no like, like I was saying earlier in the episode,
(14:55):
if you are moody, if you're Shah, if you're these people,
and if you have come to power in a certain way,
like there is no gentleman's handshake saying Okay, well played,
you guys beat us. You know we've all democracy. You
know that's not what's gonna happen. You can't, you can't
(15:17):
gracefully hand the button and move out like there is
no endgame. You you're on this tiger. You have to
keep riding because a moment, like I said, there is
blood in the water. You know, sharks will come. So
your only option then becomes is to clamp down harder,
is to double down. Right, you can't be backing down,
(15:41):
you So when when you start losing the credibility and
the legitimacy, that's when you start pulling out all these
desperate measures. Like so like one has to then tend
to think where does this all head? And with that
content text, we can look at India where it is now.
(16:02):
Most Indians educated, you know, people who read stuff, who
consider themselves rational, not like you know, conspiracy mongering. They
will be like, oh, this is a ridiculous question. This
is like clearly one of these podcasters who are like, oh,
(16:23):
is India going to be a dictatorship? You know they
I agree, it sounds ridiculous. Okay, but hang on with
me for a second. India's only South Asian country which
has not had some form of authoritarian roule. Okay, Pakistan
has had it, Bangladesh has had it, Sri Lanka's had it,
(16:44):
Nepal has had it. In fact, South Asian region tends
to flip in that in that direction very very quickly.
And if you look at the pattern into what this happens,
if you like, let's say Pakistan is an interesting case study,
or even Bangladesh, same patterns, right, what tends to happen
(17:06):
which creates this kind of a disruption, Like why does
this suddenly come about? And I think, without oversimplifying, in
a lot of cases, like in Pakistan's case, you can
clearly see they've they've gone through multiple periods where civilian
rule is suspended, Like you know, uh, there's Ayu, there's
(17:27):
Zia Luck, There's I mean Yaya Khan. In between, there's
there's Musharraf. And in each of those cases if you
see like the beginnings are exactly kind of like this,
where there is a party in power which is beginning
to lose credibility, which is which doesn't want to kind
(17:48):
of gracefully hand power over. Like in the case of Pakistan,
there was a big you know, Punjabi versus Bengali kind
of friction. There was also within the West Pakistan unit
there was a very Sindhi versus Punjabi kind of a unit.
(18:09):
There was a whole Mohajir versus like you know, the
Punjabi system, and no branch was no group was willing
to kind of be like, okay, in the name of democracy,
find you guys, fair and square, go ahead, and nobody
wanted to give that away. So when you reach a
situation where people who are in those places don't want
(18:32):
to give it away, don't want to kind of play
by the rules of democracy, which means the rules of
the democracy is also if you lose, you go right
like you gracefully move out. And when you don't do that,
that's when you start thinking of what are my options?
You know what if I don't want to go, who's
gonna throw me out? Like it'll have to be some
(18:55):
form of you know, police or army, right, So what
are my relations and ships with the police in the army?
Do I do I know anybody there? Do we have
some kind of h ideological affinity? Do we have some
kind of shared ambition? You know? Is there a role
that I can kind of create for the person who
(19:15):
can then deliver me that security? Because if I left
to the people in the processes, I'm moving out right
or I'm going to lose my capacity to control my
own party, you know, in that sense, And that's when
the mind struts going in that direction. I was I
was listening to this real uh this uh everybody's favorite
(19:36):
journalist tragedy service. I he was narrating the story about
Amashah's first election, like as a student leader. He was
in a b v P. I don't know whether the
story is true or not. I just heard rajis as
I talk about it. Where uh Shai is fighting this
college election. He's a he's a student himself, and they
(19:57):
realize that there are a lot of women voters in
the in the in the in the college, and if
the women voters vote, then he will lose. I Like
how even back in the day, like Amisha was like, okay,
women will not vote for me, Like I don't inspire
confidence from the women voters. You know, he was fighting
(20:18):
against I think a Congress student leader n s u I,
n s Ui job Hanki. Maybe the Congress had a
female candidate. But like even then, like women will not
vote for Amit cha that something's never changed, right, So
I'm kidding like whatever, because somebody will quickly point out
that there are a lot of women from BJP and
(20:42):
RSS who clearly vote for it. But anyways, like for
the joke to work, like Amisha is like fighting and
he's like, oh, there are all these women and they
will vote against me and I will lose the election.
So a day before the election, in the story as
narrated by Rajibsadasai, him and his friends call up the
(21:02):
parents of the girls and say, don't send your daughter
to college tomorrow because it's election day. Some something bad
can happen. There might be trouble, and it's a contested election.
So a lot of parents didn't send their daughters to
college the next day, thereby ensuring that he won because
like these women didn't come to college, they didn't vote.
(21:24):
Right now, whether that story is true or fully true
or not true or whatever is not the point. I'm
just saying. If it is, if I have to take
that story at face value, it reveals a very interesting mindset.
Like right from the beginning, you're you're not fighting fair
like you know, and I know, like somebody will be like, O,
(21:45):
elections are nothing about fairness. Yeah, I know, I know
all of that. But this mindset itself is like, let's
let's like there are there are strategies and tactics in
elections where you will try to like there's no fairness,
you will you will play dirty and all that. There
is all of that, But this is like let's, uh,
(22:08):
if like we're playing chess on electoral board, like let's
let's let's throw the board over you. You turn the
board over like you you you reset the whole thing,
like you go completely out there right and in in
ways which is it is not really illegal, but it
truly sort of uh extends and breaks the legitimacy of
(22:33):
the process in many ways. And bear in mind that
person or has had now a foty your political career
after that moment, uh, and is now the home minister.
And like right from the days when Moody and Share
like in Kujurat, you know, and A Mitcha was the
(22:55):
Home Minister and Modi was the Chief Minister, there was
already a lot of heat on them. BJP is a
party itself, did not trust either of them at that
point in time. Modes rise from Gujara Chief ministership to
becoming their national candidate itself was not a foregone conclusion.
Now people forget this, but as late as twenty twelve,
(23:19):
twenty thirteen, even you know, there were many people within
the BJP who were like, no, Movie is not going
to be our prime minister. He will face right And
you know, if someone like promote Mahajan for instant who
you know, like that was a freaky death. If promote
Marjin who was young and who was like clearly the
(23:42):
favored rising star within the party, if someone like that
had been around in this period, like it could have
looked very different. So Movies rise is like like a
lot of factors. But credit to him, he seized it
because he's already in twenty eleven, twelve thirteen in a
(24:03):
place in Gojra where either he has to go for
the big one in New Delhi or in five six
years he's finished his own party will kind of like
sideline him because he's playing too aggressively. He's he's moving
too many pieces around, and to his credit, he goes
for it and he successfully wins, and Amicha still doesn't
(24:24):
have the full trust of the party because because then
he's remember he didn't become Home minister right away. He
becomes like he's put in charge of the party and
then like he famously delivers Uttar Pradesh in the Uttar
Pradesh with answer by elections, which happens a few years
I think twenty seventeen, that really cemented his reputation as Okay,
(24:47):
this guy is like, you know, can can deliver the results,
and that is really the coming together and eventually, you know,
twenty nineteen elections and A Micha is now the Home
Minister has been for a while. So for them, I
think both Shy and Moody, the entire paradigm has been
(25:09):
go big or go home. Right, So if now they're
at the stage where they're being kind of you know,
called in, it becomes difficult maybe for them to climb
back down. So how do you go big beyond this? Like,
you know, you already run everything, and your capacity to
(25:31):
keep running things is being questioned. So what other option
do you have at this point is an important question.
And if you look up like the way, like I
was saying, how dictatorships have actually taken hold in other
parts of South Asia, you know, these are comparable cultures,
(25:52):
and I know everything is not as in comparable cultures
and comparable social relations. Pakistan is actual very interesting because
a lot of the people within the Pakistani political class
historically they actually dislike the political system. In fact, for
(26:12):
a lot of these it sector educated, you know, techie
people like you know, they would really actually they were
really gel well with a lot of the Pakistani ruling
elite from the seventies, eighties, nineties, even two thousands, because
(26:34):
they were all saying the same thing that, you know,
poor people should not have the right to vote. And
I think mushaff even did elections where he said, like
minimum college degrees needed, you can't vote otherwise. They mistrusted
grassroot leaders, they mistrusted like you know, all of these
politics of bargaining, of negotiating, and they all fantasized about
(26:56):
creating a new political class you know of you know,
and they all thought it could be done top down.
So the whole idea was to do it top down.
The whole idea was, you know, we will create a
new political class. I think you tried to do that.
He when he takes over, when the military takes over
in Pakistan for the first time, he is he is
(27:19):
actually trying to do land reform in Pakistan. He's also
creating he suspends political parties. But all that means is
political candidates now run as independents. You know, the it's
not so difficulty can wish them away. So you know,
he's he's trying. He doesn't like the political parties. He
doesn't like the political leaders for good reason because you know,
(27:41):
his usual complaints are corrupt, their self serving, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. So his solution is to then
create a new kind of voting class, you know, a
new kind of system. You know, he's passing all these
rules where he's saying all political party have to declare
(28:01):
their income every year. Ni karagita, I will ban you
when all leaders internal elections. He's trying to do all
of these things. None of it actually works. It just
eventually destabilizes more and more and more, because one of
the main problems in Pakistan in the nineteen sixties is
they really don't want to share power with the Bengalis.
(28:25):
And then post seventy one, if you see again during
Ziaulhak's rain, like you know, zia Ulac again comes to power,
he overthrows Bhutto and like he comes to power, and
he is also doing the same thing. And Ziaulak is
(28:45):
actually you know, quoting and he starts leaning towards the
Islamizing factions within Pakistan, like he leans towards all these
religious fundamentalists, and he starts passing his reforms or his
rule like he wants to legitimize it through religious authority
(29:06):
because he doesn't have the electoral authority, you know. So
sounds very similar like where he's like, oh, Islam killer,
I'm doing this and so on and so forth, and
he's jailing people, he's torturing people. The entire system kind
of like like disrupts. But again he is someone who
(29:29):
is also very suspicious of the political class, but he
can't really recreate the momentum keeps coming from the ground up.
And then again in the Musharaff years, Musharaff again tries
the same thing again where he's like, oh, all these
politicians are corrupt, and you know, Benazir Bhutto is in
(29:49):
exile and navashari If is exiled. And then he himself
starts his own party. You know, does musharaff because he's saying, oh,
the whole process is that these political parties are the problem, right,
And he tries to create a new kind of an
electorate and he tries his new party and yeah, like
(30:12):
it gets rejected again, like you know, it goes out
for the voting test and again like a fractured mandate comes.
And what I'm trying to say is that in all
of these case studies, and you can look at elections
in in Sri Lanka and you know, Bangladesh has has
had military coups, currently doesn't have an elected government. It's
(30:35):
hoping to transition into one. What you try to see
the pattern is actually very similar like regimes once they
lose credibility. Shae Hasina is another very great example of this.
She had near total control over all these institutions economy
(30:57):
and like culture and like you know, people like Shakibul
Hassan for instance, like Banglad probably Bangladesh's best ever cricket talent,
right cricketing talent at Shakibul Hassan uh and and Bangladesh
is a very cricket mad country and he's like their
best cricketing talent. And he's basically been in exile for
(31:21):
the last two years. He can't he he I don't
think he lives in Bangladesh. Also now since ever since
the Sheikh Hasinaku kind of she got overthrown, I think
he lives in Dubai and he no longer plays for Bangladesh.
And uh, you know, he's just he's just out of
out of the whole thing. Like that's how much reached
Sheik Casina had like from cricket to like people in
(31:45):
her party controlled the Bangladesh cricket board. Uh. They were
in you know, culture, they were in arts, they were
in economy, they were in every facet of political control
that you can imagine. Uh, they were, they were like
nearly invincible. She had actually dismissed the op like you know,
(32:06):
she ran the last election, uh, practically uncontested because the
other parties like didn't participate in the election or like whatever.
Like the elections were not very free I could be
missing some details. Don't come at me with like no,
actually this was a thing. But basically she was nearly
fully in charge and then a collapse happens very quickly.
(32:30):
And in the case of Bangladesh currently it is not
a military ruler. It is it's it's a very interesting
model for South Asia, which we've actually not seen where
you overthrow a politician like that and the military does
not take charge. Instead they've put like this, uh, you know,
Nobel laureate, like this senior guy as the face of
(32:54):
the government. I don't know enough about. I haven't like
I don't track Bangladesh as those as I track maybe Pakistan.
So I don't really know what's going on in the
sense who's really in charge and who's really because this guy,
you know, you know, see he is not has never
been the kind of person who can pull this off
(33:17):
by by his own this is not his He's probably
the respectable face, consensus candidate, but like from what I'm
sensing now, there is impatience with him. Also, they're like, Okay,
this dude needs to do elections and you know, move
on and change things around. So my point is when
things collapse, they collapse very quickly, right, and ground mobilizations
(33:42):
are very key, and they and these kind of shifts
and changes come from nowhere. So there are two or
three forces we need to kind of really look at.
One is the people in charge. When they start becoming desperate,
they start looking for what options they have, right, And
(34:05):
we've seen this in India, right, Like Indra Gandhi calling
for the emergency was in many many cases very similar,
Like suddenly she was beginning to feel the walls close in,
too many things happening, so she declares the emergency. I
think one of the reasons, one of the reasons why
(34:27):
I personally, this is my theory, why she removed the
emergency is because she comes from the family who's like
sort of neo royalty, right, like it is there, Like
you know, her father is Jabal l A Leru, and
you know she herself grew up during the freedom movement,
and I think it was a very big burden on
(34:47):
her self to leave a legacy of having disrupted electoral democracy.
Like she comes from a generation which saw the freedom struggle,
participated in it. Her has this great legacy. A grandfather
had this legacy, and now she's like a very strong
prime minister, and then she calls for the emergency and
(35:10):
like to if she doesn't flip it back, then she's
she's basically disrupting that thing. So I think it may
have been a very big It's not as simple as that.
I think it may have been a very big factor. Also,
I think and I was really I've read some of these,
some of the commentaries from the era of some great
(35:31):
books have come on emergency last four or five years.
I think she also had faulty intelligence. I think like
her intelligence people had kind of led her to believe
that if she did elections she would do much better.
And I think she she kind of overestimated that element
(35:52):
of it and underestimated just how much. And that tends
to happen in dictatorial regimes. You you know, of all
the ugly, messy protests that Tamasha that you don't like,
it is actually a very real good method of understanding
the pain points in a system. You might not like
(36:13):
dealing with it every day if you're a politician or
a ruling ruler, but you at least can see where
the pain points are when you threaten and intimidate and
wipe everything away, and like like put people away, like
people will like suddenly not stop feeling the pain. They
will be in pain, but they will just not come
out and tell you. So the moment you remove the
(36:36):
barriers like it will you're going into it blind, is
what I'm saying. So I think in that sense, Indra
and Moodie are different because for her it's like it
was a family project, right, it was a personal project
Indian democracy. Whereas these guys have come from the opposite tradition.
(36:57):
They are not from the They're not the party which
fought for the independence. They are in fact the parallel
tradition of you know, uh, the Savanna mobilization. Right, so
there's there is the the Gandhian Congress mobilization which uh,
which which post independence became like this client patron kind
(37:24):
of a thing where they took over all the institutions.
So the British became the new ruling class. And in
many which ways, even now, if you go into like
many parts of North India, actually even South India, you
will still find hardcore congresses because many ways they are
they're coming from that tradition and uh, the Jana Sung
and then later the BJP is the opposite tradition. They
(37:46):
they were really small players. They had pockets of influence
mostly in Central India and MP and you know, pockets
of Rajasthan, you know, some parts of like urban Pune
and all that, and and they came out of that tradition,
like they've slowly built their RSS network across India wherever
(38:08):
it was necessary. They like, it is a grassroots movement.
Whether you like it or not, it is a it
is a very long term mobilization. There is there are
there are generations of like there would be a generation
of Sanghi, you know, like who who was born in
the shaka, worked all their life in the shaka, built
it up, you know, set up these systems, you know,
(38:30):
and they have they have they've done that, like they've
they've grew out of that. And I think somewhere in
the nineties, late eighties, nineties, and like lots of commentaries
on it, the Saarana mobilization shifts from Congress to this
this new thing. So that parallel tradition exists. And if
Rahul Gandhi is to become a prime minister, that shift
(38:53):
has to happen again. And here's the interesting element of it.
I think while that transition was happening away from the Congress,
Rajiv Gandhi gets assassinated. So there is a there is
a gap in the in the Congress machinery, right Rajiv Gandhi.
(39:14):
We have no idea how he lived, how the politics
of the nineties would have turned out. We have no
idea how he would have done, like like he was
not a fan of Mundel politics by the way he was, Like,
we don't know how Congress would have fed, whether it
would have been relevant or not. But like without Rajiv Gandhi,
(39:37):
and until Sonya Gandhi starts coming into the picture in
early two thousands, late nineties, the Congress is basically being
run by you know tier two leadership, you know which
which always knew that they will be number two to
Indira Sanjai Raji. When all of these guys and now
(39:58):
suddenly like you know, they are in charge, they were
trying to figure out who will be basically you know,
leading the pack. So you have Sharad Pawar, you have
Narce Marau, you have Sitaram Kaseri, you have all these
regional leaders. Everyone's trying to figure out, like what's the
best way to go uh, you know, within this, within
this vacuum, and I think somewhere within that, you know,
(40:22):
Congress started losing its traditional base, which started shifting towards BJP,
which which started seeming more and more like the reliable
underdog which dissolves its chance in the you know, sun
which dissolves is short. So that that kind of filip happened.
Now it seems we are coming in twenty twenty five,
(40:43):
twenty twenty six, in the next few years, that flip
is again coming back, where like a lot of that
base that Sawara mobilization, the consolidation, you know, is beginning
to say, okay, if we tried Mody, we tried BJP,
things are really not like some of some things are okay,
but like things are really not very good. Also, you know,
(41:03):
there is a nostalgia for the Congress, which which never
truly went away. By the way, there were questions ten
years ago about Rahulai's ability. He was seen as an
out of touch fourth generation dynast. But like he's really
come into his own. He's he's paid paid the dues
as they say, he's walked across India literally and now
(41:27):
he comes off as like a seasoned, grizzled veteran who's
taken all the punches and now he's now he's counter attacking.
So there is this feeling, there is this growing vibe
that Okay, now, now let's let's give him a chance. Right,
he's earned his part. And these guys they had their
run the BJP and they had ten years. Now these
(41:49):
guys are aging RT like, let's try this out. So
I think some of that shift is happening. What is
very interesting now is how will that transition happen. Like
I said, is a very different kind of formation, Like
it's the same thing, but like it's the same sourana
centric mobilization, but it was always rooted in the family.
(42:10):
It was already rooted in the families in the center.
And then there will be the second tier leadership who
are basically working as also the it's a hubin spoke
model as who are also the second tier leaders are
also like the core and like they have their third
tier and so on and so on. And I think
when the shift happens in the nineties, the congress doesn't
(42:30):
really have a strong core in the party. Sorry, in
the family. BJP is not a family oriented party. It
is a organizational setup which has been in many which
was last ten years centralized under the leadership of Modi,
And so he's the main guy now. So unless he
(42:52):
falls really unwell or you know, untimely, you know, gets
goes out of action, he seems very much you know,
healthy lucid. He's doesn't seem to have any medical issues
that we know of. He's not going to be very
(43:13):
easy to hand over power. So you're dealing with more
like Indra in the mid nineteen seventies situation where she's
seeing the wall, where he's also seeing the walls close in.
He's also seeing his own party start to like chump
at the bits. All the usual tricks that he tried
(43:33):
are not working anymore, and even the things which worked
for him, Like there's also bad timing, like Donald Trump
has suddenly gone rogue on him. Like Donald Trump was
his personal sort of like equation he had built. And
when Trump came back to power for the second time,
I'm sure he would have expected, like, oh, this is
(43:54):
going to work well for me. It's actually worked much worse.
And if a Democrat was in power, entire Indian foreign
policy of the last seventy eight years has been told
to shreds this idea that India would be in the
American camp. The Americans have really, really, you know, put
(44:15):
that to test. So now suddenly you're seeing you know,
India scrambling to come closer to Russia, come closer to China,
and you know, we're we're, we're, we're, Like the regime
looks very shocked with how the Americans have dealt So
that has come back in a major way in embarrassed
(44:36):
the government. So I think there are some of these
things which are just catching up, and he's feeling the
walls close in. And for people like Na in the Modi,
for people like Amsha, what how do they react when
that happens? Are they going to sit back in their
chair and go like, well, we had a good run, guys,
(44:56):
we had a good run. Like we were peripheral players
in Jura, remember, like nobody like Koja was a congress state,
and we went all the way from to come into
power and we ran this and we we removed Article
three seventy, We built the dam on their welda. We
(45:16):
had a good innings. Now powner shifting, I'm too tired
for this, and let's let's let the chips fall where
they may. That's not going to happen, right, So this
is where you start really thinking, Okay, who what options
do they have? Right? Either you will start and I
(45:40):
hope i'm fully totally completely wrong. But if this starts intensifying,
and if the Bihar election heats up, and if it
starts losing narrative, you have to remember next couple of
years and very high voltage elections coming up. Bengal goes
toward Lot, goes to ward, Gujurad goes to vote ral Gan.
(46:03):
He has already gone to the Parliament and he's pointed
out the BJP and said, oh, we are beating you
in Gujarad the next time. And he's quietly done a
lot of reorganization within the Kujurat. I think the Congress.
He understands that the problem with the Congress in Gujurat
is see, even when Congress has been losing, even during
peak movie years when he was Chief minister, Congress is
(46:25):
getting thirty seven percent vote in Kujurat. That is not
a joke, right. It's a two party state. Mostly BJP
gets forty forty five percent, Congress is getting thirty seven
thirty eight percent thirty seven thirty eight percent vote is
no joke. And I think what has happened is he's
he's not very confident of his own Congress party machinery
(46:49):
in Gujarat anymore because the way these guys operate away,
the BJP operates maybe raul gandi in the Congress people.
And I've heard some people say this that they suspect
that a lot of them have been co opted by
the BJP And to win in a state like Gujrat
for the Congress, like, you can't be in a in
(47:12):
a friendly fight with the BJP. You have to really
be aria par And he's looking for rebuilding the party
because all the old timers in Congress Kujrath Unit are
in some way state shape firm doing business with the BGP.
Like if you're out of power. Congress has been out
(47:33):
of power in Kujurat for almost twenty years to more
than that. Right when you're out of power for that long,
you have to sort of bargain with the ruling party
because you're a politician in a state where you're in
opposition for twenty five years, which means all your businesses,
all your you know, commercial interests, all your personal life,
(47:55):
dirty laundry, like everything is fully open to the regime
and has been for the last two eighty years. They're
too powerful, so you have to kind of cooperate with
them a little bit. And I think what has made
it very clear to the Gujarat unit decides to stop
and I think he's rebuilding. I think the next Gujarat
election might be very interesting. Up is obviously the big
(48:17):
one everyone's gonna look look at, but utra current will
also go to elections. These are some very big ticket
things which are coming up and in many of which ways.
If these don't start playing out like the way the
regime thinks, and especially if voter manipulation, voter list manipulation
(48:37):
was a gig that they were playing and now they
can't really do it as efficiently, Oh it can. It
can flip very quickly in that scenario. What options do
they have? They You may start seeing arrest of opposition members.
(48:59):
You may start seeing executive order laws being passed which
are very random, which criminalize certain kind of political opposition. Already,
you're seeing sedition level charges or very serious charges being
brought up against journalists like you know, Sadarajan, and all
(49:23):
of these like the wire guys, and basically you're writing
critically against p JP, so you might start seeing like
a lot more intensity to this. Like I with my friends,
I like I have this very dark joke where I
keep telling them that, like, you know, subquo fascism, fascism,
(49:45):
like this is not what fascism looks like, you know, actually,
like it's it's very pleasant for what fascism is because
they're really not like breaking down the doors and kicking
skulls a unless you're like you know, Muslims or schedule
cast or whatever in certain pockets, they're really not doing
(50:08):
it to English speaking upper cast critiques of the regime.
When that starts happening, that's when you realize, oh, they
are really now turning up the heat, and I have
a feeling that may start happening, you know, like police action,
and like it will start like that. It will be
police action. It will be like a like serious cases,
(50:32):
people being beaten up, people being arrested, disappeared, Like you
can keep going to the courts, Like a lot of
people will be like, oh, our court system is very strong,
it is it really you know, courts may fight back.
People will like there's resilience in South Asian politics. And
one of the things about India is our grassroots mobilization
has always been very strong. It's not so easy to
(50:55):
do these things. But I'm just playing out of what
if scenario, Hence the question is it possible if it
were to happen, This is how I imagine it would happen. Okay,
Like you might see a large scale arrests, you might
start seeing strange laws getting passed, uh, and you might
(51:16):
start seeing a lot of disruption being normalized. You know,
gangs of people will suddenly like stop things, stop discussions,
people starting to a lot more people will start going
to at least face legal charges or mob intimidation or
(51:38):
cases or arrests for social media posts. Like I know
this is already happening, but like at a much higher level,
like you know, and when you when you when you
do that at a higher level, people will fight back
also with a higher level. Like you start arresting politicians,
you start like beating up journalists, you start throwing people
(51:59):
in jail for or Twitter and Facebook posts. There will
be backlash also, And when that backlash comes from the people,
that's when you call in you know, the Rapid Action Force,
the CRPF, the God forbid the army, and that's when
we really need to find out what the core of
(52:22):
the armed forces is. Armed forces in India have so
far in seventy years, not displayed any interest in taking
political sites. But if it comes to that, then what
does achieve to my understanding is I don't think the
(52:44):
armed forces will we are in the danger of an
armed forces takeover. I don't think so. Because in the
case of like, let's say Pakistan, like the first time
it happened, there was a like the Pakistani Army music
predominantly a Punjabi army, and they didn't want They wondered
(53:04):
what would happen if there was Bengali leadership. Right in
this case, it's slightly different because here, even if you
remove BJP and put in the Congress or an India
Alliance government, from the armed forces perspective, it really is
not a change to the fabric of how they see
(53:25):
the nation. It is civilian rule and it has gone
through civilian process. They don't really feel the need to intervene.
But however, if the regime starts, you know, taking liberties
with how they're dealing with opposition and pushback from the people, which,
like I said, they're unlikely to quietly take it and
(53:47):
retire with grace. So at that point, what does the
military apparatus or the paramilitary apparatus of the state thing
what do they start feeling Like, do they start feeling uneasy? Like, Okay,
the civilian processes are like falling apart, we need to
step in and restore order, like we don't want to
(54:09):
run things, but like they're literally like having street battles
every ten days. This is not good. We need to
kind of remember that's how it also began in Pakistan,
by the way, So I'm not saying that's what it
will go down as, but I'm just like posing what
(54:31):
if scenario? Can it happen? I don't know, I'm just
asking some questions. I hope this episode doesn't get flagged
or banned or whatever, because I don't think I have
said anything that this is going to happen or this
is happening. I'm clarifying very clearly, I'm just asking, speculating
(54:51):
if such things can happen. Right, And as an academic,
as a person who looks at cultural commentary and often
wonders about the journey of the Nation. This is something
that whether we should it's very scary, and I hope,
like I'm completely wrong, and good times prevail and we
all go to watch the next Sharukun movie together and
(55:14):
we forget this whole precarious episode and we laugh. He
remember we joked about, you know, and like there is
IPL twenty four to seven and we're art. Colie makes
a comeback to the test team and Thala you know,
plays in IPL forever and we hope that's how it is.
(55:36):
And on that good note, cheery note, thank you everybody
for listening. I hope none of us get arrested. Bye bye, Hey,
you finished the whole episode. Well done. I can't believe
you can tolerate my voice for so long. But in
case you like what you heard, you consider also joining
(55:57):
for the exclusive episode that I do for my paying subscribers,
because that show gets into slightly as your topics and
I don't really want to put it out in the
public domain. It's available on the patrech as well as
on YouTube through the join option, And in case you
don't want to drop extra money, I completely understand. Please
(56:19):
keep listening to my regular show. I'm grateful as ever.
There's a buy me a Coffee link in case you
want to drop some love. Otherwise, just have a nice day,
stay being awesome by bye.
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