A Physio’s Guide to Core Strength
One Piece on Gen Zs and a Photo Essay on a trad cartel.
Chest-Thumping is Weakness.
Fact-Checking is Power.
Satire is Oxygen.-Not George Orwell
(but maybe the trainee physiotherapist in your neighbourhood clinic)
Did you know that the primary role of muscles is not six-packs? It’s actually stability. In the soon-to-be-published "A Physio’s Guide to Core Strength," democracy is like the human body, held together by muscles, bones, and a circulating system. Without stability, you fall, whether on a yoga mat or in parliament.
Total collapse.
This imaginary book tries to prevent the eventuality that’s staring wherever the pirate flag of One-Piece is being hoisted around the Indian Ocean rim these last few months and maybe as No King in America with frogs instead of the Japanese Pirate Flag.
India’s Gen Z is not silent, either, like the infotainment anchors of our media. Many states in India, such as Ladakh, Uttarakhand, and parts of Assam, are experiencing protests by Gen Z, which we might refer to as Gen Z for Zubeen.
Common Injuries in New India’s or Today’s Body Politic:
Hindutva Hernia:
A swelling caused by too much chest-thumping. Painful, but treatable with sustained rest and fact-checks.
Colonial Scar Tissue:
Old injury sites that never healed properly, flaring up whenever the young try to run forward and not take the Danki ride to better shores. Needs careful stretching of history.
Selectoral Bond Fracture
A hairline crack in the democratic femur, invisible on X-rays but destabilising the entire skeleton. Caused by opaque funding injections that weaken bone density over time. Needs urgent exposure to the light of disclosure, otherwise risks spiralling into a compound fracture of public trust.
Mythological Frozen Shoulder:
An inability to rotate. This comes from believing in ‘no next government’ and insisting on a 3,000-year Reich Plus Accha Din workout plan.
Majority Muscle Imbalance
Overdeveloped majoritarian quads paired with atrophied minority stabilisers. Looks powerful, but collapses at the knee joint of democracy.
Patriarchic Neck Stiffness
Caused by excessive head-tilting during flag salutes. Limits vision side-to-side mumkin hain, so the believers can only see straight up to the great leader.
Saffron Sunburn
Overexposure to blazing rhetoric without protective fact-check sunscreen. Leads to chronic irritation and hyper-sensitivity to dissent.
EVM Tunnel Vision
Narrowing of the optic nerve whenever election season approaches. Corrective lenses of transparency and audit are strongly advised.
Videshi Validation Syndrome (VVS)
Flexing proudly before the mirror of the West, but posture collapses without constant praise from Silicon Valley CEOs, IMF reports, or diaspora donations.
Oligarchic Orthopaedics
A skeletal disorder where the spine of the policy bends unnaturally to support a few oversized corporates with Gujarati business reflexes. The democratic skeleton appears upright in X-rays (data, economic surveys), but on closer palpation, the vertebrae are fused around monopoly interests. Long-term prognosis: brittle bones of public trust, frequent fractures of institutions, and an economy limping despite record profits for the few.
Commonwealth Knee Jerk
A reflexive need to prove fitness to the old Empire. Despite shouting ‘De colonisation,’ kneels eagerly for validation when the Commonwealth baton is passed.
Daily Exercises for Gen Z Muscles (and the rest of us)
Resistance Band Training
Gen Z are the stabiliser muscles. Daily protests, memes, street marches = continuous reps. The burn is real, but that’s how endurance builds.
Civic Lunges:
Step forward, step back, repeat. Democracy is cyclical, but the repetition makes the legs stronger and the kick in their arse, slow, steady and effective.
Backbone Extensions:
Strengthening the spine against the same old authoritarian playbook. Their spine looks rigid as the Rsscal’s lathi, but it collapses when pushed.
Persistence Plank:
Hold. Shake the system. Hold longer. Collapse. Get up. Repeat. That’s the only true revolution.
Algorithmic Dada Dance:
Embrace absurdity. Create content that makes ‘zero sense, like Gen Z Dadaist memes, Portland Frogs, etc., to disrupt fascist dog whistles and confuse the hate out of their hashtags.
Echo Chamber Escapes:
Duck, weave, and sidestep the algorithm. Enter new forums, expose yourself to different ideas, and bonus points for feeding fascists their own logic with a wink.
Pluralism Pilates
Gentle stretching of tolerance: different languages, cuisines, and worldviews. Keeps the joints supple and prevents rigidity.
Detox Burpees
Jump away from propaganda, hit the floor, rise again. Exhausting, but the only way to build stamina in the age of relentless push notifications.
Diet & Supplements
Solidarity Protein:
Repairs tissue faster after crackdowns.
Fact Electrolytes:
Essential after exposure to WhatsApp University dehydration.
Satire Vitamins:
Keeps morale high and prevents burnout.
Pluralism Fibre
Keeps the democratic gut healthy. Roughage from diverse cultures, cuisines, and conversations prevents ideological constipation.
Empathy Iron
Prevents anaemia of compassion. Essential for carrying the oxygen of humanity through the bloodstream of society.
Equality Multivitamin
A balanced blend: caste-busting B12, gender-strengthening zinc, minority-protecting selenium. Take daily, no overdose possible.
Gandhian Salt Tablets
Restores electrolytes of resistance through small, everyday acts. Essential but straightforward: one pinch can bring down the new West Indian Company’s fafda empire.
Mandela Patience Powder
Slow-digesting, long-release supplement. Keeps movements alive through decades of confinement, fuelling endurance without bitterness.
King’s Dream Capsules
Taken nightly to sustain vision and hope, along with the best book of Dr Ambedkar and co., or songs by Nina Simone and Sam Cooke. Side effects include sudden surges of moral courage and an inability to stay seated on buses. And yes, you shall overcome.
Prognosis
Fascism is like cancer: rapid growth, no rotation, cells refusing to die. But the immune system of democracy works through persistence: boring rehab, endless small corrections, muscles firing in the background.
No exercise is final. No posture is permanent. Collapse comes suddenly, but so does renewal. So, remember:
Maintenance is survival,
Resistance is fitness.
Persistence is the only PR
(personal record) that count.
The above manual is an attempt at satire. The streets, however, are dead serious. What follows is not parody but presence.
Imagine equality as the core muscle of democracy. Some of us still believe it’s what propels humanity forward, keeps the whole body upright. But like any stabiliser muscle, it’s always under attack. Every time equality takes a step forward, counter-forces shove it back. Sometimes the same set of muscles does both the pushing and pulling, resulting in confused signals and wrong alignment. That’s the human condition.
Right now, you can feel it: equality is strained, not just in India but across the world. In India, the strongest pullback comes from the old dominant muscle memory - the caste hierarchy and the political ligaments tied to it. A hundred years ago, their parent organisation borrowed stretches and daily exercises (with lathis in hand) from European fascism, splicing it onto the nationalist struggle against colonialism. That struggle, at least under Gandhi, spoke the language of equality to hold the body together. He was assassinated for insisting on that alignment.
Seven decades later, the injury has deepened. The load has shifted away from equality. Globally, moneyed and big tech elites gnaw at democracy like arthritis in the joints. In India, caste offers a ready-made substitute, a parallel anatomy that resists reform and keeps a few of them muscled.
The question isn’t whether they will try to tear the ligaments of the Constitution. They already are, one institution at a time. The data about inequality will give a better picture. And the real test is whether the rest of us can keep training, keep rehabbing, and hold the posture long enough to prevent a full collapse.
Presenting a small sample of the visual vocabulary of Hindutva from Mumbai’s streets.
Maps of the Hindutvawadis.
Every fascism has its own geography of overreach:
Hitler had his Lebensraum or ‘living space’ that justified conquest.
Mussolini had his colonies, his ‘New Rome.’
Hindutva imagines Akhand Bharat or Unbroken India, an expanded India and a map where national posture inflates beyond bones, stretching ligaments beyond imagi-Nation.
Girgaon 
Bandra 
Naigaon, Dadar.
India is officially a secular democracy, and the Hindutva right believes in a Hindu Religious state, which they call the Hindu Rashtra. All Politics is Local. And when one of the affiliates’ male militia organisations of Hindutva likes to mark territory in Mumbai, they use the term Hindu Rashtra.
Bajrang Dal / Vishwa Hindu Parishad - Matunga District. Dhareshwar (Sanskritised name for Dharavi): Message: This nation belongs to Lord Shri Ram, it’s entire environ belongs to Lord Shri Ram… To destroy the enemies of the nation is the command of Lord Shri Ram.”
While social media is full of Hindutva content, it can be seen on the streets too. To know what the extreme fringe of the Hindutva multiverse is doing, you can pick up Sanatan Prabhat (Hindu Morning), a newspaper from the organisation that was accused of killing Narendra Dhabilkar, Gauri Lankesh, Govind Pansare and its members convicted for bomb blasts in Navi Mumbai.
Sanatan Prabhat, a fringe newspaper linked to Hindutva activism, circulates fear narratives and is a good way to keep track of their activities and dog whistles.
Translation:
Banner: Sanatan Prabhat
Tagline: The sole objective of ‘Sanatan Prabhat’ is that India must become a devout Hindu Nation. Contribution of ‘Sanatan Prabhat’ to the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra!
Healdines:
Hundreds of Hindus flee from the Muslim-majority Malpura region of Rajasthan!
Committed to the establishment of a Hindu Nation!
Read ‘Sanatan Prabhat’ now on the ‘Daily Hunt’ app!
Other article blurbs:
To know the opinion of elected MLAs on the Hindu Nation…
Unite for the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra…
Contribute to the work of establishing the Hindu Rashtra…
This piece of print is classic Hindutva street ephemera:
it frames itself as news but functions as mobilisation propaganda,
it recycles fear narratives (Hindus “fleeing” from Muslim-majority areas),
and it sutures them to the “inevitable” project of the Hindu Rashtra.
If any other religion or ideology, like communism, were to suggest something remotely like this, they would be banned and the people behind it slapped with sedition.
Here is a random thought:
Every human develops a moral compass, think of it as the body’s inner balance system. A rational person might believe religion can serve as a stabiliser, keeping you aligned when you wobble.
But here’s the complication. Sometimes that stabiliser becomes a crutch. Instead of building strength, it locks your joints. The compass no longer points to balance; it points only to doctrine.
In physiotherapy, we call this a dependency injury — when the aid meant to help alignment ends up distorting it. The only rehab is gentle rotation: stretching into empathy, exercising independent thought, re-learning how to stand without the brace of blind authority.
Because a healthy moral compass, like a healthy spine, is not imposed from outside. It is trained, flexed, and corrected daily, until balance becomes second nature.
End of patriarchal pontification from me.
And here are the people who calibrate the moral compass of Hindutva’s followers.
Translation:
“Wake up Hindu, wake up!”
In Hindustan itself, the saints of Hinduism are being insulted!
Will Hindustan tolerate this!!
“Saint Shri Asaram Bapu’s case is completely false. This is a conspiracy against Hindus by legal advisors, false allegations, and media defamation. It is a well-planned scheme to end Hindu saints and destroy Hindu dharma. If you do not understand this today, then tomorrow it will be too late. Be alert!”
-bWell-known Jurist, Subramanian Swamy
The Subramania Swamy mentioned above had these wall paintings when the man who would become the Butcher of Gaza - Bibi Netanyahu came to India.
Whether acknowledged by liberals or not, Hindutva and its affiliated organisations command a broad and deep support base across Indian society. The BJP, the main political face of this ideology, has gained popularity by engaging multiple groups, castes, and communities. At the same time, it has perfected the most crucial element of every fascist playbook: creating a common enemy through systematic ‘othering.’
Gandhi was killed, but his idea of equality endures. The other main pillar of Hindutva ideology, when examined through their actions, is Islamophobia, which it shares with the individuals they admire and seek validation from: white supremacists and Zionists.
In Maharashtra, hundreds of Hindu Shobha Yatra or Pride Parades are conducted to coincide with the election cycle with fine-tuned Islamophobic messages. These images are from a Gudi Padwa event, and it was surprising to see ISKCON as part of the event and Swami Vivekananda’s name associated with hate mongers.
These days, it’s common to see a slogan of the RSS being painted outside homes and places to mark territory - It says. “Religion, when protected, protects (you).” Here are a few examples.
This is the logo of one of the miltias of the Hindutva Right - The Bajrang Dal
The man who made the ideology popular for the masses needs no introduction:
This was one of his earlier national election campaigns when the face of Congress was Italian-born Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, who was a Sikh.
Hyperactive Right-Wing Syndrome
Like his friend Donald Trump, Modi rules the airwaves through constant over-exercise: daily bursts of content, flexing through small wars and big, sudden tariff push-ups, and erratic economic HIIT sessions like demonetisation.
In clinical terms, they should watch out for overtraining syndrome: the body appears pumped, but it may actually be burning out its nervous system. Many of these tactics were first tested in India in the social media age (and earlier by fascist regimes), shock policies, propaganda sprints, culture-war stretches, are now being copied abroad by Trump and his gym buddies, only they’re doing it on stimulants and at a fast pace. People and central banks are busy hoarding gold because of the uncertainty they bring to the markets and our future.
The cult of personality.
The men who want to be Kings, Priestly Kings and their bond.
Trad Uncle Kings Vs Gen Z
Warning:
Facsimiles of Fascism hate rehab. They prefer quick fixes, steroids of majoritarian muscle, chest-thumping injections. But rehab is slow, tedious, humiliating, and that’s precisely why it works. Get ready to chip away slowly for equality and resist hate.
Discharge Note:
By waving pirate flags and making memes, Gen Z are not building abs; they’re preventing paralysis that the older sellouts with EMIs to pay will mock. They are becoming the irritating physios tugging your arm until it moves, forcing you back on your feet when you’d rather collapse. The loudmouth batting for democracy will curse them today and thank them tomorrow.
Right, left, or liberal - there is no guaranteed ‘right side of history’ we can lean on. What we do have are principles of equality, and the knowledge that committed, collective action can still bend the world toward something better.
No posture is permanent.
No collapse is final.
Persistence is the only cure.
That’s all, folks.
Key terms:
RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh):
Right-wing, paramilitary organisation in India, central to Hindutva ideology. All-male, uniform inspired by Italian fascists; top leadership traditionally Brahmin.
Bajrang Dal/VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad):
Militant affiliates of the Hindutva movement, known for street-level mobilisation and aggressive campaigns promoting Hindu Rashtra.
Akhand Bharat:
Hindutva’s dream of an “Unbroken India”, an expanded, unified Hindu nation, is referenced in maps and propaganda.
Ram Rajya:
Refers to the “rule of Lord Ram”used as propaganda for an idealised Hindu utopia by Hindutva supporters.
Shobha Yatra:
Hindu Pride Parade, often synchronised with election cycles, is designed to stoke religious fervour and targeted messaging. Shepherding voters ahead of elections.
ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad):
The student wing of BJP is visible in educational institutions through banners and activism. officially varies by source, but the core count is about 40 to 50 major official affiliates, working in fields like education, students, labour, tribal welfare, charity, women, and politics.
Salutes. "Seven decades later, the injury has deepened. The load has shifted away from equality. Globally, moneyed and big tech elites gnaw at democracy like arthritis in the joints. In India, caste offers a ready-made substitute, a parallel anatomy that resists reform and keeps a few of them muscled." No one could have put it better.
Imaginary book that I wish was real. Fantastic writing as always