The Indian Delusion

Dear fellow Indians, let me tell you a story you think you already know. You think India gained independence in 1947. You think we're a sovereign nation making our own choices. You think democracy is working for us and that our Constitution protects us, that our institutions serve us.

You are catastrophically wrong.

We are taught in school that India threw off the British yoke, adopted democratic values, and now we're slowly but surely making progress. Sure, there are problems—corruption, poverty, communalism—but hey, we're the world's largest democracy! We have checks and balances! We follow international best practices! Except—nope. It's all untrue.

What actually happened is that we traded one set of masters for another. The British left, but they didn't dismantle their system of control. They just handed the keys to a new set of administrators so thoroughly indoctrinated, that they couldn't imagine any other way of governing.

Think about it. How is it that a millennia old civilization—a culture that gave the world mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, and medicine—suddenly needed to import its entire governance framework from people who had been living in mud huts when we were building universities? The answer reveals the scope of our colonization.

We experienced the most comprehensive cultural lobotomy in human history. Every institution that defines modern India—our courts, our bureaucracy, our educational system—was designed by people who fundamentally believed Indians were incapable of self-governance.

These systems were tools of extraction and control, refined over centuries of colonial rule. And we kept them. All of them.

Our Supreme Court still follows procedures designed to serve British commercial interests. Our IAS officers still function like colonial district collectors, extracting resources for the center. Our universities still teach us to think like grateful subjects rather than sovereign citizens. The worse part is that this intellectual colonization runs even deeper than institutional mimicry.

While we were busy feeling proud about our "democratic values," the Western powers that had colonized us physically were busy colonizing us ideologically. They convinced us that adopting their current political fashions was the price of being "modern."

So we embraced concepts like "secular liberalism" and "human rights" and
"civil society"—not because they emerged from our civilizational wisdom, but because failing to do so would make us look "backward" to people whose opinion we somehow still craved.

The irony is suffocating. We're so desperate to prove that we're not, "uncivilized", like they claim we are, that we've made their approval the measure of our worth.

Meanwhile, China tells the West to go take a hike and builds infrastructure. Singapore tailors democracy to serve Singaporean interests. Even tiny UAE refuses to genuflect before Western human rights lectures while building the future. But India? India still asks permission. This psychological dependency has cost us decades of development.

I used to be one of those Indians who felt embarrassed by our "authoritarianism." I'd watch BBC documentaries about Indian "democracy in decline" and feel ashamed. I'd read The Economist articles about "Modi's autocracy" and worry we were becoming a "Hindu Pakistan."

Then I realized something that changed everything: these same publications had cheered every single American invasion of the past two decades. They had applauded British involvement in Libya, Syria, Iraq. They had celebrated French interventions in Africa.

Suddenly, their concern for Indian "democracy" felt less like genuine worry and more like the anxiety of former colonial masters watching their favorite colony finally grow a spine.

The Numbers Don't Lie (Unlike Your Favorite English Newspaper). Since 2014, India has lifted more people out of poverty than any country in human history. We've built more infrastructure in a decade than we had in the previous five decades combined. Our space program reaches Mars while European rockets explode on launch pads.

But according to the international press, we're sliding toward authoritarianism. The pattern becomes clear when we examine other successful Asian nations. Not a single Asian country that has successfully developed did so by following the Western democratic playbook. Not one.

South Korea was a military dictatorship during its development phase. Singapore is a one-party state. China ignores Western human rights lectures. Japan developed under American occupation.

The only Asian country that has tried to develop while constantly seeking Western approval is India.

We have two options:

1. Continue pretending that the current system is working. Keep believing that if we just follow international best practices a little more faithfully, if we just prove our secular credentials a little more convincingly, if we just apologize for our culture a little more abjectly, then someday the West will accept us as equals and we'll magically become developed.
2. Recognize that sovereignty isn't something we're granted—it's something we take. Understand that we have to choose between foreign approval and domestic development. Accept that building a strong, prosperous, culturally confident India will require us to stop asking permission from people who fundamentally don't want us to succeed.

The 2014 mandate wasn't about replacing one political party with another. It was about replacing one civilizational approach with another. It was about choosing Indian solutions to Indian problems instead of importing Western solutions. But our institutions—our courts, our bureaucracy, our media, our intelligentsia—are still operating according to the old paradigm. They're still more concerned with what The New York Times thinks than what Indian voters want.

Either we complete the decolonization process that began in 2014, or we remain a perpetual client state—rich enough to buy Western products, weak enough to never challenge Western interests, confused enough to never realize what we've lost.

The choice isn't between democracy and authoritarianism. It's between sovereignty and servitude. It's between civilizational confidence and cultural cringe. It's between an India that works for Indians and an India that exists to make foreigners comfortable. And these aren't abstract philosophical choices—they play out in every policy decision, every judicial ruling, every editorial position.

When we look in the mirror, do we see citizens of a great civilization temporarily going through a difficult phase, or do we see grateful subjects of a benevolent international order?

This is the real divide in Indian politics today. Not between left and right, not between secular and communal, not between progressive and conservative but between the colonized and the free.

Between those who still seek validation from the former masters and those who have remembered what it means to be Indian.

The resilience of the Indian people has carried us this far. But resilience without direction is just survival. And survival isn't enough anymore.