Mohan Bhagwat has discovered a sinister foreign hand behind protests in India. In his Vijayadashami speech on Tuesday, he warned of 'demonic forces' from the West seeking to destabilise India and engineer regime change. He declared that such attempts would fail.
How depressingly familiar. Indira Gandhi popularised the technique of blaming domestic dissent on foreign conspiracies. The 'foreign hand' became a convenient explanation for protests against corruption, inflation and authoritarianism. This mentality culminated in Emergency, when democratic dissent was suppressed in the name of national stability.
