It was while sipping my morning coffee and watching the news a few weeks ago that I noticed something quite spectacular. You all remember this, I'm sure: Our government had dispatched global delegations to defend Operation Sindoor—and in a calculated move, the speakers included members from various political parties, and different faiths!

India dispatched multi-faith, multi-party delegations overseas while also featuring Muslim officers like Col. Sofiya?Qureshi as spokespeople—clearly reflecting a diversity optics strategy. The message was clear: "India is united, inclusive, and firm against terror."

It looked good. No denying that. It was a PR dream. If war had a red carpet, this was it.

But then I changed the channel.

Back home, pastors were being thrashed, nuns arrested on false charges of conversion, and church gates vandalised before Sunday services. Hate speeches were being delivered with impunity, anti-conversion bills passed, and opposition leaders arrested with enthusiasm.

Suddenly, the unity parade looks more like a costume party—dressed up for the West, undressed at home.

And that's when it hit me: this is an Addition and Subtraction government.

Add abroad. Subtract at home.

Add Christians, Muslims, Sikhs when presenting India to the world; subtract them from the national narrative back home. Add glowing language on democracy at the UN; subtract press freedom within the country. Add tolerance when the cameras are on; subtract it the moment the lights go out.

It's the kind of math that would have made the late Shakuntala Devi tear her hair out in frustration.

Sometimes I wonder: Is the ruling party playing chess or running algorithms? A political computer, perhaps, or Chanakya's strategy, with instructions that go:
if audience = international, display unity; 
if audience = domestic, exploit division.

But there's a problem with treating governance like a math problem: people aren't numbers.

You can't reduce minorities to decimal points abroad, and erase them like chalk from a blackboard at home. You can't expect the world to applaud your additions while ignoring your subtractions.

Because emotions don't follow equations. Faith doesn't work on formulas. And hypocrisy has no equal sign.

The world is reacting. You can see it in the way the world's superpowers treat us. In the way they acknowledge our enemy.

Not to the India they meet at diplomatic dinners, but to the India they're seeing through journalists' arrests, hate crimes, and the silence of good men who should know better.

Even investors are wondering if their rupees are safe in a place where facts are deleted and truth is edited.

So yes, carry on with your mathematical genius, dear government. Keep adding friends abroad, and subtracting critics at home. Just don't be surprised if one day, the sum of all this equals isolation.

And as for me, I'll sip my coffee, read my Constitution, and calculate on my calculator that A Nation + United People – Hate = A Powerful Nation!

That, my dear people, is the only mathematical formula that can save us...