We have just completed a quarter of a new century. Twenty-five years that feel less like a milestone, more like a quick look at the clock while in the midst of a long march through exhaustion—war-torn, punctured by instability, marked by an unrelenting sense of uncertainty. All around is a landscape of rubble and unrest: Bangladesh dangerously combustible, Gaza flattened, Ukraine bleeding, Afghanistan erased from the global conscience, Sri Lanka economically battered, Pakistan politically paralysed, Myanmar crushed under military boots. Some societies lie in devastation, others struggling merely to crawl out of it.
The world itself appears directionless. It lurches between technological euphoria and existential dread—between dreams of space colonisation and the looming reality of ecological collapse, pandemics and war. We are no longer sure where humanity is headed: utopia or catastrophe. Either could be of its own making.
The disorientation runs deeper. Even language, once a stable anchor of identity, has become unsettled. Only artificial intelligence has no identity crisis. At least it admits it is still learning! Human societies, by contrast, often pretend certainty while hollowing out meaning.
Words that once bound civilisations—moral, ethical, constitutional—sound increasingly archaic. Old ideas are dismissed as inconvenient or elitist. In their place stand shock and silence. Children are killed in conflicts with numbing regularity—in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan—and the world debates semantics rather than accountability. Both words and bullets open fire on unarmed civilians, mow down holiday crowds or worshippers. Things like that barely disrupt the news cycle. Fear exists but selectively, or fleetingly.
There is nothing politically incorrect anymore. Human trafficking has not disappeared: it has simply moved into darker, more sophisticated corridors of power. Girls are still trafficked, now repackaged as networking tools in elite circuits. Robots, it turns out, do not suffice everywhere. All forms of flesh and blood labour cannot be replaced. From Silicon Valley barons to online marketing tsars, from presidents to academics to royalty—no sphere of power is morally insulated. The comforting belief that some institutions are inherently civilising has collapsed.
Against this bleak global backdrop, it is telling that organisations rooted firmly in last-century ideas have reached defining moments. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has completed 100 years. It is a moment of celebration for its adherents. The RSS has not merely survived; it has moved in from the periphery to entrench itself at the centre of Indian political power. Meanwhile, what it considers its ideological opposite, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), struggles to retain control even in its last remaining stronghold, Kerala.
History’s ironies deepen. Russia—once the ideological patron and financial supporter of Indian communism, over whose loyalty the Indian Left split in 1964—is today among the BJP government’s closest international partners. President Vladimir Putin did not even meet the Opposition during his India visits. Moscow’s diplomatic attention is firmly focused on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Strategic pragmatism has replaced ideological fraternity, and no one pretends otherwise.
The RSS has flourished partly because it operates with an advantage: it draws its power not from reason but emotion. Identity speaks its own primal language; it is largely impervious to the realm of tarka or argumentation. National assertion, civilisational grievance, cultural revival, ideas like these can be turned over to an instrumentalist use for political mobilisation in an unproblematic way; they seem non-negotiable. So while it plays its long, patient game, political parties appear as if they keep recalibrating around their core principles.
The Indian National Congress presents a contrasting story. It began as a petitioning organisation seeking incremental rights from colonial rulers. It transformed into a mass movement demanding Purna Swaraj under Mahatma Gandhi. Post-independence, it reimagined itself as a socialist republican party, and later as an economic reformist democracy under P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh. Its foreign policy pivoted from Soviet alignment to an Indo-US strategic partnership, eventually embracing open relations with Israel—once unthinkable.
But in reinventing itself repeatedly, the Congress lost sight of a fundamental democratic truth: governance is not a political position. Power is not purpose. Organisation, cadre-building and continuous engagement with people matter as much as policy positions. The Congress grew accustomed to being in office and mistook administration for ideology. When power slipped away, there was emptiness.
The RSS, by contrast, invested relentlessly in cadre discipline and a sense of undimming ‘brotherhood’. Proximity to power accelerated its reach, but the groundwork was laid across decades. Atal Bihari Vajpayee once famously sent VHP leaders Ashok Singhal and Giriraj Kishore to Sathya Sai Baba, hoping spiritual counsel might temper the Ayodhya mobilisation. The godman reportedly advised softness of tone around matters of devotion. It changed little. Godhra followed, and Indian politics was permanently altered.
One consequence of ideological clarity—however contentious—is loyalty. BJP leaders rarely defect. The same is largely true of the Left. Jyoti Basu may have sulked when his party denied him the prime ministership in 1996, but he never abandoned the CPI(M). Congress leaders, by contrast, drift across parties with ease, having confused power with political belief.
The seeds sown in 2025—political, economic, ecological—will bloom or wither in 2026 and beyond. What is beyond doubt is that neither India nor the world will return to familiar certainties. As political elites obsess over electoral arithmetic, ordinary citizens struggle for breathable air, potable water, affordable healthcare and dignified livelihoods.
Even economics mirrors this moral drift. Gold, silver, copper and rare earths have become speculative chips rather than civilisational resources. Markets celebrate growth while lives remain precarious. Reform is invoked endlessly, but justice rarely features in the conversation.
A new year, however, demands more than despair. If the past 25 years have shown how power can operate without shame, the next must ask whether politics can rediscover responsibility. Democracies do not collapse overnight. The erosion happens incrementally, through fatigue, silence and surrender. The antidote lies not in nostalgia, but in rebuilding political engagement beyond elections. Institutional power can only come later.
The year ahead will test whether citizens remain spectators or choose participation. History, as this quarter century reminds us, does not move in straight lines. It turns when societies decide they have had enough of shock—and begin, once again, to speak.
Santwana Bhattacharya | Editor