Orphic Exposure

On September 11, 2001, the world’s most powerful nation was brought to its knees by nineteen men armed, not with nuclear weapons or dynamite, but with box cutters and a conviction that their violence would change history. The destruction of the Twin Towers and the attack on the Pentagon was not simply an assault on American soil; it was an assault on the liberal democratic order the United States claimed to embody. Nearly 3,000 civilians perished that day, and with them ended the illusions of invulnerability that had marked America’s post–Cold War triumphalism. Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis collapsed into rubble as George W. Bush declared a new war—one that would redraw alliances, topple regimes, and reshape the architecture of global politics: the “War on Terror.” Yet, if 9/11 was America’s wound, the scars of this war would be deepest in South Asia. For while U.S. armies marched into Kabul and Baghdad, the logic of terrorism and counter-terrorism found its most endurin...

  Here we are, in August 2025, sipping our cutting chai in the corridors of power as Home Minister Amit Shah gracefully pirouettes in the Lok Sabha (or should I say, dances?), to introduce the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirtieth Amendment) Bill, 2025. The headlines scream: a bill to evict PMs, CMs, and ministers from office if they languish behind bars for 30 days straight, even before a single verdict lands. Let me spill the tea: this is not about democracy—it’s about decency. A measure that a minister cannot govern from a jail cell. Who’d have thought such a baseline standard would need constitutional reinforcement? There are days when the Parliament looks like a temple of democracy. And then there are days like the one when Amit Shah strode in with the 130th Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2025, when the Opposition turned the Lok Sabha into a low-budget reality show audition. As an intern in the office of a Shiv Sena Member of Parliament, I had my notebook open, my pen read...