In May 2026, The Economist launched “Ashoka”, a column dedicated to India. It’s a rare distinction: Only a handful of countries have named columns — Britain (Bagehot), the US (Lexington), China (Chaguan), and now India (Ashoka). One would have expected the series to reflect curiosity and, given the scale and complexity of the nation, a bit of humility.

Instead, it has begun with smugness.

Barely a month in, the June 21 piece, “The unlikely city welcoming Delhi’s intellectual refugees”, tells readers that for centuries, and even post-Independence, Delhi was India’s intellectual capital because of its “sheer density of serious thinkers”.

We are told that since 2014 the space for free thinking has narrowed: “Chiefs of public universities were replaced with more pliant figures. Private universities and non-profits came next. Authors of inconvenient papers lost their jobs. Think-tanks lost their sources of funding.” Most astonishingly, that “there is no one to talk to in Delhi anymore.”

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The article drips with misplaced condescension — presuming that the tired framework of secular liberalism is somehow the exclusive yardstick by which to measure the only civilisational democracy in the modern world.

To be clear, we are not BJP bhakts. Our own criticisms of the government are many.

First, it’s too thin-skinned. In 2014, the vulnerability was understandable. But not after 12 years in power. India........

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