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My brother, my dear friend

Please allow me the liberty of sharing with you my utter sense of incomprehension when I see in our newspapers so many photographs of massive gatherings in protests in most towns in America against you, your administration and against your rightfully aggressive pursuit of coercive diplomacy against Iran.

I am baffled. I just cannot understand how you could allow this kind of nonsense? The sheer gall of the “no kings” organisers! Why was permission even given for such congregations?

I do not understand this “America is a democratic country” argument. As if the United States is the only democracy in the world! We are also a democracy. In fact, I have declared that we are the mother of all democracies. That does not mean that my critics and rivals should feel free to go about bad-mouthing me or my government or my party or holding demonstrations or causing disruption.

Even at the risk of sounding somewhat presumptuous, may I suggest that you ask your embassy people in New Delhi to study how we have tweaked the law, how we have trained the Delhi police and how we get the judiciary to look the other way when we use the baton.

Your people should be able to tell you there is no “Jantar Mantar” in Delhi any more. For years, soft governments allowed all sorts of discontents and malcontents to gather at this place, without realising that such demonstrations simply sent a wrong message to our rivals at home and outside.

Conceptually we have – to use your favorite term – “obliterated” the very idea of dissent. Not just at Jantar Mantar but almost everywhere – by the simple device of calling any expression of dissent as “anti-national”.

If you like the idea, I can arrange for a special briefing for your new ambassador here in New Delhi. By the way, I quite like the man; Sergio is a real hustler, just the kind of man after my heart. What I liked about him is that he seems to be totally cynical, just unbothered by all this democratic humbug.

My officers would be able to brief him about how we successfully discredit any protest. All it takes is just a few agents provocateur to infiltrate the crowd, raise inflammatory slogans, have the offensive language recorded or videographed and, then, get a case (or what we call an FIR) filed. Distraction is the name of the game. Your people should study how we gave the farmers’ agitation a bad name.

My colleague Amit Shah and his officers have been remarkably creative in finding ways and arguments to put behind bars anyone who dares to voice criticism of any kind. I have a wonderful law officer who can bamboozle any judge of the higher judiciary into denying bail to anyone and everyone we choose to put behind bars.

Please do not misunderstand me when I point out that your people are losing their edge in the battle of narratives. From my experience I can tell you that this is one area where constant alertness is needed. The “enemy” – at home and abroad – is always, always trying to distort achievements and accomplishments and focusing on failures and flaws and flops.

Leaders like you and me are always ourselves at war in defence of our people. It is therefore absolutely necessary to find manipulators and manufacturers of “dynamic lies”. The only people I know who play this game to perfection are my friend Bibi’s mandarins. Whatever violence and aggression they inflict on their neighbours, they end up convincing most of the world that they are just draining the swamp.

Or, you should do a simple thing; in fact, this is what I do: simply ignore facts, especially inconvenient ones. Just go on claiming success, achievements, historic steps, etc. And, never neglect to ridicule, bad mouth or mock your predecessors, including from your own party.

Live in the moment. Do not be so hung up on being consistent. Inconsistencies, contradictions and simple brazenness are all tools we need to employ if we have to fulfill our historic – and, in your case, a divine – mandate.

Lastly I find you are often unable to hide your emotions and true feelings. For example, there was no need, in my opinion, to say that you were glad that the former FBI director Robert Mueller was dead. Nor, if you ask me, was it necessary for you to offer any comment when your missile killed those students in the school in Iran. Learn to shed crocodile tears.

Brother, I hope you do not take this note amiss. Please do not leak it to the media! I will get into needless trouble with my own party men.

One and only Vishwaguru.

Atmanirbhar is the pen-name of an aspiring satirist, who irregularly contributes a column, From the Vishwaguru Archives, and believes that ridicule and humour are central to freedom of speech and expression.

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