With tears in eyes, Anuj Loya yesterday urged NGOs and politicians to stop harassing his family over his father’s death. Little does Anuj know that the Lutyens Establishment loves nothing more than a useful cadaver. It will trample over a million grieving families if it helps them dislodge Modi in 2019. The Loya family is just one of the many pawns the Establishment is bringing together for a vicious assault on India’s foundations. And no matter how much Anuj Loya begs, his family will have to face the brunt of the machinations of a cruel elite.

You cannot start winning again if you fail to acknowledge why you lost in the first place. The Congress party, which is just one of the constituents of the Lutyens Establishment, has not made that mistake. Ahmed Patel and Sonia Gandhi have accurately identified how a gradual consolidation of the Hindu vote has helped Narendra Modi win in 2014 and then ratchet up unprecedented electoral victories since then. The strategy to get back power in 2019 is simple. Reverse the consolidation by lighting so many caste fires across the country that it exhausts the citizenry into electoral submission. And just as an insurance policy to ensure unambiguous victory, the Establishment shall also lead an offensive on every major institution which holds the country together. The crescendo of violent chaos this will create is expected to persuade the fatigued voter to hand the keys back to the Gandhi family.

Last week’s unprecedented Supreme Court drama is just another step in this direction. Politically critical verdicts like the Ram Janmabhoomi are imminent and the only option which benefits the Establishment is postponing the decision to beyond 2019. Best way to ensure that is by creating anxieties about the credibility of the nation’s highest court. In a country where bloodshed is permanently looming, the journey from such anxieties to domestic conflict is a short one. But then who cares about long-term consequences of such scorched-earth strategies if the obstinate Modi can be sent packing.

Let’s not forget the external factors at play here. India’s rise under Modi has been making multiple capitals across the world deeply uncomfortable. A dysfunctional neighbour was a gift which China took for granted till Doklam happened. For Pakistan, a weak neighbour who couldn’t fathom a response to a grave crime like 26/11 got replaced overnight with a country which knew how to extract a price for every misstep by Rawalpindi. One would be naïve to assume these countries will not try everything possible to influence the 2019 elections. At the minimum, the Establishment will not have to worry much about funding hurdles.

It is humbling how the mere vote of the Indian citizen can put all these efforts to nought. But the simplicity of the action should not cloud the fact that the Indian citizen has a difficult job at hand. Not only do they need to exercise their valuable right to vote, they need to do it without getting psychologically drained or mentally pummelled by the upcoming flood of chaos. The Establishment excels in confident deception – encouraging eager underlings like Jignesh Mewani & Umer Khalid to spill blood on the streets while figureheads like Rahul Gandhi issue grand-standing statements. A pliant media going all out to confuse the public by obfuscating the source of the turmoil only make the job of the ordinary voter more difficult. But then sustaining the world’s largest democracy was never going to be easy.