India today is not ruled by a prime minister but by a wish guru. A leader fuelled less by policy than by image, less by competence than by dominance. At the heart of this phenomenon lie two forces Francis Fukuyama identifies as isothymia and megalothymia: the yearning to be recognised, and the darker craving to dominate. The first is an innocent and universal human impulse. The second is what happens when recognition becomes a zero-sum game. Countries nursing old colonial wounds are particularly vulnerable to this transformation, mistaking raw power for self-respect. India's growing discord, both at home and abroad, is a textbook example of this shift.

The pattern is global. Dominance hierarchies are driving debates everywhere, from conspiracy theories to cultural skirmishes like Sydney Sweeney's "good jeans". We live in the age of pop psychology, where one-size-fits-all cures for complex social pathologies sell faster than careful scholarship. Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, with its lobsters and wrens, rehabilitates hierarchy as a survival mechanism, outselling more challenging works like Acemoglu and Robinson's The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty, which connects the thirst for dominance to despotic leviathans. These influences seep into politics, legitimising strongmen who promise self-assertion on a national scale, even at the cost of liberty.

Last week, I wrote about India's monsoon session and the widening rift between the Modi government and the RSS. Some readers complained that I glossed over the international blowback against the diaspora and the policies that caused it. The oversight was due to space, but the point deserves elaboration,........

© The Express Tribune