George Bernard Shaw, whose understanding of human frailties was Freudian, had famously said that “if you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they will kill you.” This sage advice is worth remembering at a time when a mere tweet can lead to incarceration, where lynching is an ever-present reality and vigilantes lurk just around the corner. 

There are those who believe that the safest medium for expressing dissent is the lowly cartoon with its caricatured image, often wordless, or stand-up comedy that provokes thought and laughs. But then, in our dysfunctional world, comedian Munawar Faruqui is thrashed by vigilantes in Bhopal and then jailed, without proof, for allegedly “hurting religious sentiments”.

Clearly, no individual’s right to free speech, irrespective of the medium he chooses, is altogether immune from retribution if it inflames the powerful or the fanatical. Perhaps, for the timorous like me, the masked world of the fable, the allegory, the satirical tale is a relatively safe bet, especially when accompanied by a disclaimer. Ergo I wish to clarify that the ensuing narrative is fictitious and any resemblance to persons, dead or alive, is purely coincidental. 

Once upon a time, a big country of mind-boggling diversity with a population of a billion people, elected a Supreme leader more popular and more loved than any before him. He was incorruptible and brimming with energy; a visionary who promised all-round development; a mesmeric orator who had his audiences eating out of his hands; a dandy who wore the most garish attire; a man of mystery steadfastly refusing to divulge anything of his personal life. Most had forgotten his dark past. He was all things to all men, running with the poor and hunting with the rich – the tinsel messiah of the exploited and the exploiters! His millions of devotees were ready to kill for him!  A humongous narcissist, he modestly accepted all credit for every success of the State.

Admittedly, in the initial years of his rule, the country did well on all fronts. Aided by a favourable international climate and precipitous decline in global oil prices, the economic upswing was impressive. Both industry and agriculture were thriving. The country was hailed by the international community as a future economic powerhouse.

Foreign relations were his first love, instigated by an idiosyncratic yearning for approval of the Western world, which at one time had ostracised him. At his coronation, the leaders of all the neighbouring countries were invited and most accepted, only to become props in a solipsistic mega-show. Initially, he showed consummate statesmanship by reaching out to the nation’s arch enemy, a gesture that portended well for peace in the sub-continent. He became the foremost globe-trotter among heads of state and was soon known and feared for his unrestrained, chummy bearhugs. Extravagant public events were staged in the countries he visited that were wholly dedicated to fanning his ego and bolstering his image, not his country’s. Significantly, he was never averse to belittling his predecessors in foreign climes, which only underlined the fact that he cared two hoots for his country’s image. It was all about “ME”. 

All along, in the background, the spin doctors toiled at crafting a meticulously choreographed image of the Supreme leader as an enlightened and compassionate man of action and a visionary, working tirelessly for the common good. The elaborate fiction was transmitted through sponsored biographical encomiums and cartoon books, a social media blitz purveying apocryphal tales of childhood travails and heroic deeds, even the incredible story of his fighting off a crocodile.

And then there were his weekly radio broadcasts to the nation ala Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats, that were chockful of trite, tedious homilies. Each weekly broadcast cost the exchequer approximately 8.5 crore rupees, a huge price for an egocentric exercise in self-promotion. Yet, for a man who was voluble and eternally sermonising his audience, he had a morbid dread of impromptu interaction with the press lest he trip and be exposed.   

True to his style dark secrets about himself  were kept shrouded from public scrutiny  through sheer intimidation which included coercion, blackmail and plain bribery -  the regime’s standard modus operandi. The mafia tactics were lethally effective in compelling obeisance even from the country’s courts. A Supreme Court Chief Justice who was embroiled in a sexual harassment case was reduced to putty in the hands of the political executive, giving a series of judgements in favour of the government. For good measure, details of the Supreme leader’s academic qualifications were withheld from public scrutiny on the court’s orders.  

To be fair, he was initially the ruler for all his people. His adoring subjects believed his message of social solidarity premised on the doctrine that every human being matters. He emphasised his government’s determination not to allow any religious group to incite hatred against others. Those who knew him well were stunned by his appeal calling on communities to preserve the core values of tolerance and plurality and to fight poverty together instead of fighting one another. All this sounded incongruous coming from a person steeped in the ideology of bigotry and majoritarian nationalism, but such was his persuasive power that even the sceptics believed that the ugly duckling was actually a swan! But real life is not a fairy tale. As pointed out in the Old Testament: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?” 

An overweening hubris turned out to be the Supreme leader’s nemesis and the beginning of the unravelling of the real character behind the facade! At a time when he was the undisputed master of a country that was steaming ahead of other nations as “an economic powerhouse”, he took an earth-shaking decision that wrecked the economy and rendered millions unemployed. His brainchild, Demonetisation, shaved a good 3 percent off the GDP and brought the informal economy to a grinding halt. About a hundred people died waiting in queues for their own money – collateral victims of a despot’s mad venture. And like the character in a John Wayne film, he showed no compunction: “Never apologize and never explain – it’s a sign of weakness.”

Even as the country was picking itself up from the wreckage of demonetisation, the Supreme leader inflicted another ruinous measure that further crippled the economy. The hastily enacted GST regime promised “one nation, one tax” and aimed for simplifying taxation but was so ill-conceived that the government had to keep amending the tax structure, exemptions and compliance requirements. The fiddling with the rules continues apace, causing untold harassment to the medium and small traders, while the State governments grumble about receiving the rough end of the stick.

It was during this period of economic blunders and missteps that the Supreme leader decided to cast off the veneer of being the patriarch of all his people and instead revert to his real persona of a majoritarian cult figure. The country witnessed a deepening cultural mutation as vigilante squads terrorised and lynched members of the minority community in the name of protecting the cow, launched “home-coming” campaigns that virtually ended the freedom to choose one’s faith, and hunted down inter-faith couples, thereby putting an end to any kind of solidarity between communities. All this pernicious polarisation happened due to a nod and a wink from the Supreme leader. This was not all. Legislation such as the CAA and Anti-Religious Conversion laws were passed with the express intent of reducing the minority community to second-class citizens.

A thumping victory in the general elections after his first five-year term convinced the Supreme leader of his own invincibility and acted as the catalyst not only for teaching the minorities a lesson but also for flexing muscle in the wider world. In a display of reckless braggadocio, the Supreme leader’s plump and menacing alter ego announced to the country’s Parliament that he was prepared to die to regain territories presently under the control of the country’s arch enemy and also areas occupied by the Red Dragon decades ago. A stupid, injudicious statement if ever there was one, it provoked the Red Dragon to forcefully occupy huge tracts of territory in the Supreme leader’s country.  Even more frightening, the Red Dragon launched a diplomatic offensive along with massive loans to win over the neighbouring countries. At this point in time the Supreme leader cuts a lonesome figure in the Asian Sub-Continent. However, in the surreal world of alternative facts that he has created, the Supreme leader insists that “not an inch” of his country’s land has been occupied by the Red Dragon. His gullible subjects are left to wrestle with the conundrum that no land is in illegal occupation against the contradictory demand that the Red Dragon should return to the status quo ante – a classic example of “doublespeak”.

A little over a year ago, humanity was swamped by the greatest calamity ever – the Covid 19 pandemic – which has already claimed over three million deaths worldwide. The Supreme leader’s response to the pandemic has been a litany of catastrophic mistakes - from the draconian lockdown without notice, the lack of preparation for the predicted surge, the preening complacency when there was a fortuitous reduction in cases, the unpardonable refusal to ban large gatherings even when the pandemic had intensified to the criminal mass export of vaccines without factoring the needs of his own people. 

In point of fact, three months ago when it seemed that the pandemic was under control, the Supreme leader boasted in Parliament that his country had played “a significant role in saving humanity”. He even attributed the control of the virus to the lighting of diyas that he had propagated. Tragically, the inevitable second wave has now devastated his country, with almost three lakh cases and over 2000 deaths every day. The cremation grounds and graveyards are chock-a-block with the dead and the grieving. 

According to psychiatrists, the Roman emperor Nero was the obnoxious man he was on account of his compulsive self-absorption, a defiant yearning to be always right, a craving for the spotlight and the need to talk incessantly and not listen. He fiddled while Rome burnt. On a par with the fiddling megalomaniac, the Supreme leader crowed about the jam-packed crowds at his election rallies even as his people sickened and died across the country, many of whom were paying the price for attending election rallies. His country is in a deep hole with no clue as to what will happen next.

When in distress, one turns to the Mahatma for spiritual solace.  The great man said: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it – always.” Amen!