The dark one's due

Two revelations have jolted the Indian establishment. Former Supreme Court Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul alleges in his memoir that former Chief Justice DY Chandrachud was too deferential to the Modi government, even withdrawing cases that questioned the executive's delay in judicial appointments. That is a polite way to say he was compromised and in turn compromised the judiciary. An Indian Express report exposed how two Election Commissioners (a majority) were bypassed during the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Why the surprise? For twelve years the Modi-Shah-Doval nexus has left breadcrumbs mapping a creeping, hostile takeover of the republic.

The blueprint was written in the blood and silence of the Judge BH Loya case. In 2014 the judge hearing the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, which implicated Amit Shah, died in suspicious circumstances. Whistleblowers revealed heavy pressure and bribery attempts from within the higher judiciary. The institutional burial of the case warned every courtroom in the country. It proved the state machinery would now whitewash street thugs, while institutional bigwigs eagerly sold their constitutional mandates for a few creature comforts. Whether a post-retirement Rajya Sabha seat for a compliant Chief Justice (Ranjan Gogoi), or a lucrative corner plot for a former Army Chief (VK Singh) who would practically drive his institution into the ruling party's lap to become a junior minister, the price of subverting a democracy was cheap. These fragile egos sold themselves for pennies on the pound.

Once the judiciary was tamed, the rot spread through the hard power structures. As early as 2015, prosecutor Rohini Salian told NDTV's Sreenivasan Jain of instructions from the National Investigation Agency leadership to go soft on right-wing terrorists in the Malegaon case. When I reminded you of this last year, the website of the channel, since taken over by Adani, which had evaded the ban on Indian news in Pakistan, was quickly banned. In 2016 the government bypassed the hallowed seniority principle to appoint General Bipin Rawat as Army Chief. The man would soon find his twin in Pakistan. Ideological alignment, sycophancy and expedience would henceforth trump institutional norms. The compromise is so absolute that the Army now mines ancient Indian texts for strategy under Project Udbhav, and the Integrated Defence Staff hails a Gita lecture to mid-level officers as inspiring.

The Central Bureau of Investigation was decapitated in a midnight executive coup removing Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana to shield defence contracts like the Rafale purchase from scrutiny. In 2018 four Supreme Court judges, Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph, held an unprecedented mutiny, warning that democracy was at stake due to selective case assignments. The Reserve Bank of India and the Election Commission were overruled on the opaque Electoral Bonds scheme. When Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa dissented against clean chits for the ruling duo, state financial agencies hunted his family.

Capturing reality means capturing data. In early 2019 two acting members of the National Statistical Commission resigned in protest as the government buried their verified report showing unemployment at a 45-year high. It was leaked to Business Standard. Border realities were similarly hidden until last week, when Indo-Tibetan Border Police Director General Shatrujeet Kapur confirmed ongoing military face-offs with Chinese troops in the territory India administers as Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as South Tibet (Zangnan), exposing the hollowness of the secure border story. After the 2019 Pulwama tragedy, former Governor Satya Pal Malik claimed the Prime Minister and the National Security Advisor told him to stay quiet about intelligence failures, proving that institutions were forced to guard political optics over soldiers' lives. That optic would lead to Modi's re-election and the abolition of Article 370.

The soft power pipeline was choked as ruthlessly. The first move tested the waters with blatant appointments, packing historical research councils with revisionists. The state then installed RSS enforcers as university vice-chancellors to break student resistance. It weaponised anti-terror laws in the Bhima Koregaon case, inventing the phantom threat of the urban Naxal to criminalise scholars like Anand Teltumbde, Sudha Bharadwaj, Shoma Sen and Hany Babu. Global academics like Romila Thapar met petty bureaucratic humiliation, forced to submit her curriculum vitae to a captured committee to prove her worth. Private sanctuaries fell when billionaires caved to government pressure, forcing critics like Pratap Bhanu Mehta out of Ashoka University. The goal was simple: to ensure the next generation lacked the historical vocabulary to question the Vishwa Guru project.

It is welcome that functionaries are finally speaking openly, even if only from the safety of retirement. It looks as though the deal Narendra Modi cut with the dark one for twenty-five years of unchecked power is drawing to a close, and his soul is ready to be collected. His recent manoeuvres fail to land with their old impact. The cracks are widening, and the leaks will only grow. Buckle up for far more shocking revelations.

This raises a terrifying question. When Modi's detractors finally replace him, how will they undo this staggering damage? The blueprint began years ago with Ajit Doval's pitch at Sastra University, where he argued for a ten-year unbroken term to rewire the Indian state. To decontaminate the system, the opposition must pitch for no less. Five years is not enough to dig out the ideological rot embedded by the lateral entry scheme and the unaccountable super-bureaucracy of the National Security Council Secretariat. By parachuting ideologically aligned individuals into Joint Secretary roles, the RSS has bypassed the rigorous UPSC examination, altering the genetic makeup of the civil service so the machinery stays loyal to the saffron agenda long after governments change.

The incoming leadership must also rethink its tools of restoration. The Congress party traditionally prefers polite diplomats from the Indian Foreign Service for the NSA post. But the intelligence community, the true muscle of the deep state, is largely made up of Indian Police Service officers. A diplomat cannot dismantle a hardened police state. You need a policeman who knows where the bodies are buried and how the truncheon is wielded: an officer unaffected by Ajit Doval's sprawling influence, with the moral clarity, motive and institutional memory to serve as the ultimate wrecking ball.