Why do international reports suddenly propagate that democracy in Bharat (India) is in decline? Is it a coincidence that this chorus has grown louder when the civilisation-nation rises in global stature and attempts to execute difficult but independent policies in the departments of external affairs and military? Beneath the numerical charts and rankings on freedom and development, a pattern has emerged—one that eerily resembles the colonial playbook used in the 19th century. We may now be witnessing a contemporary form of “orientalism", weaponised via global indices. The concept was canonised in postcolonial studies by Edward Said and continues to exert intellectual influence.

Analysed historically, colonial powers not only invaded but also narrated. Said notes that the military expedition that France undertook to Egypt in 1798 consisted of a cache of knowledge producers. Artists and scholars produced the Description de l’Égypte—a massive, decades-long documentation of the land of pyramids, which could be easily circulated. It portrayed Egypt and the East as anarchic and backward, which was in need of enlightenment.

No less a tactician than a great general, Napoleon knew that such a strategic narrative about Egypt would justify his invasion to the public in France and international audiences. The same logic guided the British Raj to depict Bharat as backward, superstitious, timeless, and varna-bound. It legitimised imperial occupation as a “civilising mission". David........

© News18