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No force on earth can stop a regime from leaving when its time is up. In the current context, history will surely recall July 20, 2026 as the tipping point, when the very Gen Z that had not known any regime other than Modi’s (and was being nurtured assiduously with his post-truth poison) tore away from Putana’s breast. The scenes of how brave-hearts were mercilessly beaten up by maddened minions of state power are etched in public memory – for they shattered the dome of fear and re-awakened India.

Every move by the regime has, thereafter, backfired – as the General Will, that Rousseau grappled to explain, had just walked away from it, showing it the exit door. The fact that martinet has finally lost the plot after a dozen years of careful crafting of enforced obedience and that he is surely going, is clear from the near unanimous derision and unabashed disgust with which every instance of corruption, high-handedness or incompetence is now greeted with by all.

The first response that lights up with this realisation much of India has snapped out of its induced trance is not relief – for the final struggle has just commenced. It is a mixed feeling of partial fulfilment that a dozen good years of many people’s spent lives in fighting and suffering were not in vain.

When most people preferred silence in public

Twelve years ago, when India voted decisively for Narendra Modi – thanks largely to a unprecedented campaign, carefully designed, lavishly financed and meticulously carried out – India burst out into a choreographed euphoria. Realists were almost swept away, as they clung to their belief that this “Hindu Hriday Samrat” who had waded his way to power through riots and deaths in thousands, could never metamorphose into a grand benevolent ruler.  Little did many people realise that the simple leader in half-sleeved kurta with a fixed grin (and a commoner’s one week’s stubble on his face) would soon upgrade himself into the most vain and expensive dresser after Louis XIV, and always give a menacing scowl. As his sidekick explained later, most of what he promised as AchheDin then were jumlas or fakes.

But it was apparent before 2014 was over, that most people, including many liberals, preferred silence in public, while expressing horror in private. “Neutrality” became the common alibi of many who sought to evade reality and play safe. It were, ultimately, the tactless ones in every walk of life who came out in the open, braving the tsunami of public opinion.

They could see the Weimar Republic’s fate repeat itself in India – but they could only forewarn a largely non-receptive audience. What hit fast and furious was the shocking realisation that liberal democracy had really so shallow roots in India and that millions could be easily and dangerously attracted to brazen communalism. Families split down the middle, as many openly flaunted religious supremacy, and childhood friends parted, bitterly and irreconcilably.

There is little point now in repeating the sequence of events – how each of the fortresses, that were nurtured for seven decades to protect constitutional........

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