Questioning the Politics of Hostility
Questioning the Politics of Hostility
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
- Gautama Buddha
India’s greatest inheritance is not land or monuments, but the practiced art of living together across deep differences. This coexistence was never automatic. It was built, maintained, and defended-through study, vigilance, and deliberate restraint.
Today, that inheritance is under quiet but relentless pressure. A style of politics has gained ground that treats hostility not as a problem to be managed, but as proof of authenticity. Anger is realism. Suspicion is vigilance. Restraint is weakness. Questioning the anger itself is disloyalty.
This essay examines the politics of hostility -and why it is dangerous not only to society, but to the ordinary people drawn into it.
What is the politics of hostility?
In the politics of hostility,
- disagreement is no longer debated-it is weaponised,
- calm is reframed as complicity,
- outrage is rewarded while reflection is mocked, and
- ordinary people are gradually taught that hostility is their civic duty.
When this style becomes normal, something far more serious occurs. Ordinary citizens-neighbours, shopkeepers, students, daily-wage workers-can be nudged across legal and moral lines into acts that turn them into criminals.
The instigators fade into the background.
The participants pay for years.
This is not a matter of ideology. It is a matter of method.
How hostility has been normalised before
History offers repeated warnings.
At the Battle of Plassey (1757), soldiers fought believing they were defending sovereignty. Yet the outcome had already been shaped elsewhere. Mir Jafar believed alignment would bring security. Instead, he learned a recurring lesson of power: systems that thrive on instability reward usefulness, not loyalty. Once usefulness ends, protection evaporates.
In World War I, millions were mobilised through cultivated hostility toward an “enemy.” Patriotism was real; manipulation was real too. The result was a lost generation, traumatised societies, and elites who emerged largely untouched. Hostility was sincere for many-and profitable for very few.
Other moments reveal the same structure:
- In industrial America, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency redirected worker anger sideways (against fellow workers) rather than upwards (toward insulated power).
- During the Reign of Terror, suspicion became civic virtue-until hostility turned inward and consumed its own architects.
Across eras, the pattern is unmistakable: hostility mobilises widely, while benefits concentrate narrowly.
The digital accelerator: WhatsApp and the slide into criminality
Today, the same method operates faster and closer to home.
A single forwarded message-a blurry video, an alarming text about “threats,” “conversions,” or “danger”-can turn suspicion into collective fury within minutes. Ordinary residents, believing they are acting responsibly, step into intimidation or mob action. Someone is harmed. Arrests follow. Families fracture. Criminal records are created.
The people who forwarded the message almost never face consequences.
The ordinary citizen who acted on it does.
Journalist Ravish Kumar captured this danger with painful clarity while discussing a recent incident: when one calm individual stepped into a mob and stopped the violence, he did not only protect the intended victim- he also protected the young men in the crowd from becoming criminals.
This is the most overlooked risk of the politics of hostility:
it quietly converts its own participants into offenders and then abandons them to the consequences.
When mobilisation ends in humiliation (anonymised witness)
I once encountered a man from South India whose experience illustrates the most corrosive aspect of the politics of hostility-not only abandonment, but humiliation after loss.
He was a small trader, modest in means but deeply invested in social respectability. Drawn into WhatsApp-driven political discussions that framed participation as moral duty, he worked earnestly in what he believed was a larger cause. He encouraged his bright young son-academically capable and professionally promising, with a short programme from a leading management institute-to assist in organisational work during elections.
The son was not involved in violence. Yet proximity to a charged political environment proved dangerous. Exposure widened faster than the family could comprehend, and it ended in tragedy.
What followed compounded the loss. The father later described how the very networks that had welcomed his labour distanced themselves completely. He was told-explicitly-that his work had been in an independent capacity, that no organisation bore responsibility, and that the matter was not theirs to pursue. Where he had expected solidarity, he encountered denial. Where he sought justice, he met silence.
More painful still was the humiliation. After the death of his son, he felt quietly shamed for having believed he was serving a larger cause. Even appeals to moral authority, he said, resulted not in support but in pressure to remain silent and move on.
Whether every perception was accurate or not, the consequence was unmistakable: the risk had been personal, the loss irreversible, and the responsibility firmly pushed downward. The system continued untroubled. The family was left alone with grief and stigma.
As the Mahabharata reminds us through Vidura’s counsel:
“That cause which abandons its own in distress is already defeated.”
- Mahabharata
This ancient insight captures the moral failure at the heart of the politics of hostility. A cause that demands loyalty in moments of mobilisation but disclaims responsibility in moments of consequence may continue to operate-but it has already lost its ethical claim.
Incitement with abandonment: a lesson from history
Indian history offers a sobering illustration of incitement without responsibility. In the record surrounding Nathuram Godse, it is widely acknowledged that Vinayak Damodar Savarkar made clear that responsibility for any violent act would rest with the individual alone.
Whatever one’s view of ideology, the method matters. Hostile narratives and moral certainty were supplied; legal and moral consequences were explicitly pushed downward. Godse was not protected from criminality; he was prepared for it and then left alone with it.
The lesson is not about individuals. It is about a political method that encourages certainty, disclaims responsibility, and abandons the actor when consequences arrive.
A contemporary mirror: America
Recent American experience shows how this method corrodes institutions in real time. Aggressive rhetoric eroded trust in elections, courts, and media. Ordinary supporters absorbed legal and social costs, while those who monetised outrage remained insulated.
As Hannah Arendt warned, the danger lies where the distinction between truth and fiction collapses. When hostility becomes normal, thinking itself is treated as betrayal.
Why this matters especially in India
India’s strength has never been uniformity. It has been the difficult, practiced art of coexistence. A politics that normalises hostility is therefore especially dangerous here-not because Indians are fragile, but because hostility attacks the very skill that allowed diversity to survive.
When hostility becomes ordinary:
At that point, the crucial civic question is not who shouts the loudest, but who benefits-and who pays.
Completing the loop: who benefits?
Asking “What does a leader personally gain?” often leads nowhere. Systems built on hostility do not require visible personal gain. They require participation, distraction, and compliance.
The revealing question is simpler and harder:
Who benefits when hostility becomes normal?
Not the daily-wage worker who ends up in jail.
Not the family divided by forwarded messages.
Not institutions that quietly lose legitimacy.
Benefits concentrate among those insulated from consequences-while costs are distributed downward, often as lifelong legal and moral burdens.
Safety is not automatic
India’s religious and philosophical inheritance offers resources of restraint and compassion. But inheritance is not immunity. These values must be studied, practiced, and defended, especially against political styles that treat cruelty as realism and hostility as strength.
Questioning the politics of hostility is not naïve. It is civic care.
A society can survive fierce disagreement.
It cannot survive when ordinary people are taught that becoming cruel-or criminal-is the price of belonging.
Before acting on anger, pause and ask:
Who is asking this of me?
And who will pay if I do?
From the Bhagavad Gita (12.15, faithful paraphrase):
“He who is free from anger, fear, and attachment- who neither causes suffering nor is disturbed by it- is dear to me.” - Bhagavad Gītā (12.15, faithful paraphrase)
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः
Om śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ
May there be peace in the body, peace in the mind, and peace in the world.
AI Assistance Note
This article was developed with the assistance of large language models, including ChatGPT (by OpenAI) and Grok AI (by xAI), used as tools for dialogue, clarification, structural refinement, and tone calibration. These tools helped stress-test arguments, improve coherence, and ensure careful handling of sensitive historical and contemporary material.
All ideas, interpretations, judgments, experiences, and conclusions expressed in this article are entirely the author’s own. Responsibility for accuracy, emphasis, and any remaining errors rests solely with the author.
Originally published at https://opensaurabh.blogspot.com on February 6, 2026.
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