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A well-known parable tells of a man who approached the Buddha and hurled a barrage of insults at him. The Buddha listened in silence, smiling gently. Frustrated by the lack of reaction, the abuser demanded to know why his vitriol had failed to provoke a response. The Buddha replied: “If I choose not to accept your gift of abuse, to whom does it belong?” The moral is clear: on an individual level, we hold the power to render an insult impotent by simply refusing to internalise it.

Narendra Modi, however, is no Buddha. In his politics, a healthy dose of personal indignation and fierce rhetoric is to be expected. What is far less acceptable is his self-righteousness and moral grandstanding.

The protestors at Jantar Mantar, and across the country, are the primary casualties of this unforgiving ecosystem with Modi as the central symbol. It has deeply fractured the public psyche. As the political scientist Suhas Palshikar has observed, this environment has stripped the youth of hope, rendering their aspirations seemingly meaningless. The reality has become starkly Kafkaesque; much like the faceless, unyielding bureaucracy in Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the current state machinery remains entirely disconnected from the moral realities of its citizens. The resulting lack of institutional accountability does not deter dissent or rehabilitate the public;........

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