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The Administration of Certainty

Uttar Pradesh has never been short of rulers. It has simply outlived them. Ayodhya was already old when the Mughals arrived. Varanasi was conducting its rituals when empires were still learning to write their names. These cities did not acquire meaning because they were governed well. They acquired it because they refused to disappear. The present administration governs with a particular confidence: the confidence that ambiguity is not merely inconvenient, but dangerous. Its moral universe arrives pre arranged. What results is not so much a political programme as a posture, one you are meant to recognize, not examine. Consider what happened in Prayagraj in June 2022. Javed Mohammed's house was demolished within days of his alleged involvement in protests. The bulldozers came on a Sunday. There was no court order. There rarely is. His wife and children were given minutes to leave. Officials cited illegal construction. They always do. By evening, the house was rubble. By the next mor...
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Trumpists against Trump

  Donald Trump has alienated a good number of his MAGA supporters by seeking to suppress the full disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Are his supporters angry because they think he is guilty of having sex with underaged girls, or because he is using his office to control information and limit what the public can know? Many of the most fervent Trump supporters subscribe to conspiracy theories, believing that a ‘deep state’ runs their lives and that Democrats either built that state or protected its clandestine operations. For Trump to conceal the disclosure of a file that might contain details about powerful people implicated in a sex trafficking network is to act like one of those politicians who profit from lying and keep ordinary people in the dark. Alex Jones, the far-right radio host, told Trump: “You’re not the pope, bro!” Steve Bannon predicts that 10 per cent of Trump’s loyalists will turn away (they will still be Trumpists, but against Trump). It would be a better worl...
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“Hippo(trump)cracy(which is crazy) ki bhi seema hoti hai”

I n a move that shocked absolutely no one with a passing familiarity with American foreign policy, President Donald Trump has thrown a tariff tantrum aimed at India. The crime? Daring to buy oil from Russia to, you know, power our economy and keep the lights on for 1.4 billion people. On August 4, Trump declared that India buying Russian oil was a grave sin. This pearl clutching comes from the same United States that was happily importing Russian oil itself until February 2022. But why let a little hypocrisy get in the way of a good headline? In Washington, that’s not a contradiction; it’s just called a Tuesday. So, here comes the hammer. A 25 percent tariff on Indian goods, designed to cost our exporters $7 billion a year and threaten 87 percent of our exports. The goal is presumably to get American companies to cheer for “Made in America” products that are, of course, mostly assembled from parts made somewhere else. This is a spectacular U-turn from February 2025, when Trump and Prim...
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