In Narendra Modi’s India, silence has evolved into a governing method rather than a momentary lapse.

During crises, controversies, and institutional failures, the state increasingly withholds explanation, avoids scrutiny, and reframes accountability as disloyalty. This deliberate quiet narrows democratic debate, weakens institutional autonomy, and reshapes the relationship between power and truth. Nationalism is selectively deployed to shield authority, while dissent, even from within the state’s own institutions, is managed through delay, disruption, or suppression. Nowhere is this more visible than in the growing civil military divide, where even the country’s highest military leadership appears constrained under an ideologically dominant political order.

This tension becomes most evident in the treatment of former Army Chief General M. M. Naravane. His memoir, Four Stars of Destiny, should have been a crucial historical document, offering insight into the 2020 India China standoff in Ladakh,........

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