There exists a curious breed in modern India — urbane, schooled in elite institutions, proficient in buzzwords like “equity” and “empathy,” yet pathologically allergic to politics. They glide through gated lives, wielding expensive ideologies in tweet-sized expressions, all while cocooned in the delusion of being apolitical. Let’s be honest. You aren’t apolitical. You’re simply privileged enough to believe the consequences of politics don’t apply to you.

Your bank account insulates you from inflation. Your gated society filters out civic decay. Your Uber bypasses potholes, your Wi-Fi shields you from reality, and your weekends are spent agonizing over which Netflix documentary best signals your “awareness.” Meanwhile, the fabric of the nation frays at the edges — silently, violently — and you remain engrossed in your curated chaos. “Apolitical” is not a stance. It’s a smokescreen. A euphemism for indifference laced with convenience.

You post aesthetic infographics about Gaza and climate change but know nothing of your ward councillor. You chant Ambedkarite slogans on social media, yet can’t name the Article that protects your liberty. You’ll hold forth on Orwell, but skip the polling booth on voting day — too busy, too jaded, too cool to care. Your rebellion is performative. Your conscience outsourced.

Disillusionment is no excuse for disengagement. Yes, politics is murky. So is surgery, yet you don’t ignore a tumour. Democracy doesn’t demand perfection. It demands participation. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: every time you disengage, someone with far less hesitation and far more hate fills that vacuum. And they do show up. They organize. They vote. They legislate. They shape the country — while you’re still deciding whether to “opt out” of politics like it’s a subscription plan.

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

This isn’t neutrality. It’s abdication. And abdication, in a democracy, is betrayal. Consider the irony: India’s most underprivileged citizens often participate in the political process with more zeal, more clarity, and more hope than you, the supposedly “enlightened” ones. The same people whose children breathe toxic air, who queue for hours for rations, who live one policy failure away from collapse — they still vote. Because they don’t have the luxury not to. You do. And that’s the problem.

Politics is not an extracurricular activity. It is the architecture of your freedoms. The scaffolding of your rights. When you disengage, you don’t rise above it — you simply surrender it to forces less scrupulous, more sinister, and deeply committed to reshaping your silence into consent.

Cynicism isn’t intelligence. It’s inertia disguised as intellect. It’s easier to mock activism than to embody it. Easier to repost than to resist. But democracy doesn't run on sarcasm and self-preservation. It runs on courage. On conviction. On inconvenient participation.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

So the next time you’re tempted to proclaim, “I’m not into politics,” pause. Reflect. Ask yourself: who benefits from your indifference? And more importantly, who suffers? You don’t have to join a political party. But for the love of reason, join the discourse. Read. Question. Debate. Vote. Protest when you must. Participate when you can. Because if you don’t, you’re not just apolitical — you’re absent. And in times like these, absence is complicity. India doesn’t need more armchair philosophers. It needs citizens. Active ones. Agitated ones. Awake ones.

History doesn’t remember the silent. It remembers the stubborn, the noisy, the inconvenient. Be one of them.

About the Author

Saptarshi is a public policy professional with an academic background in psychology and public policy. He is the co-founder of Citizens for Reform - India and formerly worked with Health Parliament, where he collaborated closely with the former Advisor to the Union Health Minister. Saptarshi has contributed to India’s Viksit Bharat Abhiyan Vision Document and the UN IGF’s Dynamic Coalition on Environment, focusing on governance, sustainability, and civic engagement.

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