A Bitter New Year Wish for the Republic (A Wake-Up Call)

A Bitter New Year Wish for the Republic (A Wake-Up Call)

Happy New Year.

May 2026 continue exactly as designed.

May we wake up to more headlines of unspeakable violence against women and children—followed by selective outrage, calculated silence, and conveniently redirected blame. May justice remain slow, uneven, and loud only when it suits power.

May our timelines overflow with nonstop propaganda—
“Hindus khatre mein hai,”
blasted across X, WhatsApp, and TV debates—
while real threats like hunger, unemployment, failing schools, and collapsing healthcare are carefully kept off the screen.

May those who shout the loudest about nationalism continue to send their own children abroad—on H-1Bs, green cards, and foreign passports—while lecturing the rest of us about “anti-national” behavior.

May we normalize lynchings as “incidents,”
dismiss custodial deaths as “procedural lapses,”
and forget names like Graham Staines, Stan Swamy, and countless others whose only crime was conscience.

May investigative agencies remain “independent” only on paper,
election processes remain “robust” only in speeches,
and corruption scandals come and go so fast that outrage fatigue finishes the job silence once did.

May every tragedy be milked for votes,
every terror attack become a talking point,
every question be branded treason,
and every critic be told to “go to Pakistan.”

May Bollywood keep us distracted—
item songs, chest-thumping nationalism, and empty spectacle—
while real stories of suffering, dissent, and resistance are buried under noise.

May religion continue to be weaponized,
history rewritten,
institutions hollowed out,
and morality outsourced to hashtags.

And finally, may we—the citizens—
keep scrolling, keep adjusting, keep surviving,
telling ourselves this is “normal,”
that this is “how it has always been,”
that speaking up is useless.

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Or… We Could Wake Up

This is not about one party, one ideology, or one religion.
It is about power without accountability.
It is about fear replacing reason.
It is about silence becoming complicity.

Nations do not collapse overnight.
They erode—slowly—when citizens stop asking hard questions.

If this makes you uncomfortable, good.
Discomfort is the beginning of awareness.
Awareness is the beginning of responsibility.

The real question for 2026 is not:
“Who is in danger?”

It is:

“What kind of society are we becoming—and who is benefiting from it?”