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A republic occasionally encounters moments that illuminate questions far larger than the events that produce them – moments less about the fortunes of a government than about the character of democracy itself. In the digital age, power rarely announces itself through the blunt instruments of legislation or law enforcement alone; increasingly, it operates through curated performance. Two short Instagram reels, optimised for fleeting attention spans, recently offered a vivid glimpse of this theatrical statecraft.

In the first, a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl stands before a lens to deliver a public apology. Her offense was angry, unpolished language used during a protest at Jantar Mantar – the historic site in New Delhi where citizens gather to demand redress from an often (unhearing) unsympathetic administration. Her face carries the visible anxiety of a minor thrust into the ruthless glare of public outrage.

In the second, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the nation’s youth in the register of a forgiving patriarch, declaring that he has “forgiven” the children for their indiscretion – framing their anger as a temporary moral lapse best met with grand paternal magnanimity.

Taken separately, each video carries a simple message: the first, remorse; the second, forgiveness. But the constitutional significance of the episode lies somewhere else. Between remorse and forgiveness stands a third democratic virtue that neither video acknowledges – accountability. It is this virtue that separates a constitutional republic from a political constitutional autocracy.

The aesthetic of state grooming, in which the machinery of power reshapes public discourse into a morality play, substitutes parental indulgence for administrative responsibility. A child’s unfiltered rage is stripped of its political context and reframed as a domestic flaw requiring correction. In that transaction, the state never has to answer why a fifteen-year-old felt compelled to take to the streets in the first place. The grievances of the protest dissolve into the ambient noise of social media, leaving behind only the flattering image of a merciful leader.

When institutions recede while personalities advance

There is a delightful observation attributed to the painter Amrita Sher-Gil, made in a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru: that politicians often prefer to believe the sea is looking at them, rather than admit the simpler truth – that they are merely looking at the sea. Whether the line survives as anecdote or metaphor, it captures a timeless psychology of power, offered, one imagines, as a light and affectionate tease rather than an indictment.

But power does subtly alter perspective. It persuades those who hold it that every event revolves around them – criticism becomes personal, praise becomes personal, even silence becomes personal. Gradually, institutions recede while personalities advance; a government comes to be identified with a leader, and the nation is imagined as speaking to one individual rather than through its constitutional institutions. Democracy was designed precisely to resist this temptation.

The Constitution creates offices, not idols. When power turns solipsistic, dissent is no longer read as a legitimate democratic grievance but as a personal insult, an act of disrespect toward the sovereign. The sea is no longer permitted to be turbulent on........

© The Wire