First: unleash the Uncivil Disobedience Movement. Mahatma Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement played a stellar role in Indian independence — even though it planted a mendacious founding myth about our basic nature — which, over the years, has evolved into something far more authentic to who we are: unruly, unapologetic, occasionally meme-based.Second: the bureaucrats. We look up to them to do what they have mastered over decades — firm, masterly inaction. The Trump administration is about to meet the most Kafkaesque force known to man, one that can make The Trial look like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (which, when you think about it, is also a perfectly appropriate name for The Trial): the Indian Babu.By virtue of clearing the most difficult exam known to man, the Indian Babu has ascended beyond mortal constraints, into the pantheon of divinity. Anyone portraying his struggles directly wins a National Award. Trump might be the unstoppable force. The Babu is the immovable object. Or, as the latter would say: Lunch ke baad aana. Every angry Truth Social post will be met with a reply so anodyne and bullet-pointed that it will cause his advisors to re-read it three times before realising it says nothing.Third: the Indian internet. Post the Pahalgam terror attack, we saw how quickly Indians online can unite for a collective cause. This is a digital space forged by a peculiar combination — English fluency, democracy, and truly democratised data plans — making it one of the most chaotic, creative, and terrifying corners of the internet. K-pop fans, fact-checkers, political IT cells — all can be redeployed. This time, not for local skirmishes, but for a hashtag war that makes Mar-a-Lago trend for all the wrong reasons.
Fourth: cultural boycotts. We go after America’s favourite exports — the Hollywood–Marvel Complex. No more superheroes in spandex saving the day; we’ll stick to our homegrown universe where a moustachioed cop in sunglasses can take out a small army with a bicycle chain.Finally: the legal noise machine. Our talking heads have been testing the upper limits of human hearing for years. It’s time to channel that decibel power towards Washington until the White House starts issuing press releases in CAPS LOCK.And now, let me borrow lines from an intermittent fasting enthusiast who is quite familiar to Americans:Even though large tracts of trade and many old and famous companies may fall into the grip of Trump’s tariffs and all the odious apparatus of MAGA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in the WTO, we shall fight in the corridors of Davos, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing bandwidth on the internet, we shall defend our economy, whatever the cost may be.We shall fight on the hashtags, we shall fight on the WhatsApp groups, we shall fight in the fields of cricket commentary and in the streets of Connaught Place, we shall fight in the hills of Bollywood gossip; we shall never surrender.And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this nation were to be cut off from its burgers, its Marvel movies, and its overpriced tech toys, we are a 5,000-year-old civilisation that has integrated Persians, Mughals, Mongols, Brits, socialism, capitalism, and the IPL without losing our sense of self — we will not be shaken by some reality TV star with a spray tan and a tariff chart.
