I was born in 1996—the same time when India had just started reaping the fruits of liberalization, when people spoke of a ‘New India’ emerging, free from the shackles of old hierarchies and traditions. The Cold War had ended, satellite TV had arrived, and the internet was knocking on our doors. It was an age of hope—hope that India would finally step into the modern world, shedding its casteist, feudal, patriarchal baggage.

But now, as I stand in 2025, re-reading Dipankar Gupta’s Mistaken Modernity, looking back at the last 25 years, I wonder: Did we ever really enter the race for modernity? Or have I been living in a country that mistakes change for progress, and repackages old regressions as new norms?

I have witnessed history unfold before my eyes, and each time, I expected modernity to triumph. But every time, I saw it get defeated, diluted, or worse, co-opted. Let me walk you through my years—my growing up in a country that keeps promising modernity but refuses to live by it.

The Early 2000s: Where My Illusions Began

I remember the first time I saw an ad for Fair & Lovely, a young woman applying cream, her skin magically turning lighter, and her life getting better. Even at a young age, it made me uneasy—why did modernity mean whiter skin and not a freer mind?

Bollywood painted a picture of a modern India—one where women confidently wore short skirts, and love was free from parental approval. But off-screen, the same actresses were scrutinized for their clothing choices on prime-time debates, and love marriages still had to pass the rigid test of caste and family honour. We embraced modernity as an aesthetic, not as a principle—comfortable with its appearance, but unwilling to let it disrupt the deeply entrenched social order.

2012: Nirbhaya and the Year India Woke Up… Then Slept Again

December 2012—Nirbhaya’s brutal gang rape in Delhi made me question everything. Suddenly, streets that were a part of daily commute felt unsafe. Suddenly, every woman in India had to answer one question: Why were you out late at night?

The protests were fierce, the anger was real. Laws were changed. But did our mindsets change?

Ten years later, we still blame women for the violence they face. Rape jokes are normalized. Women were still asked what they were wearing. The men who killed Nirbhaya were hanged, but the system that produced them is still alive.

And then in 2024, it was repeated, in Kolkata.

2014-2019: The Rise of Mob Rule and the Death of Dissent

In 2015, a man was lynched on suspicion of eating beef. By 2017, lynching had become a national pastime. People were killed for interfaith relationships, for speaking up, for existing in the wrong skin.

The modern world values free speech, reason, and individual choice. But in India, we criminalized opinions. Writers were killed. Historians were labelled anti-national. Rationalists who questioned blind faith were shot dead.

I kept asking myself: If modernity means progress, why are we more intolerant now than we were 50 years ago?

In 2025, the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) was adopted in Uttarakhand, very much in line with one of Gupta’s characteristics of modernity: adherence to universal norms; but he forgot that all this can be done with ulterior motives of harassing one particular group.

2019-2020: CAA, NRC, and the Betrayal of the Idea of India

I stood at Shaheen Bagh in early 2020, watching women, young and old, protesting against a law that decided who belonged and who didn’t. It was a historic moment—a moment of resistance. But then came the Delhi riots, the arrests of students, the shutting down of voices.

Modernity was supposed to mean universal rights, equality before the law, and protection from discrimination. But instead, we were asked to prove our citizenship in the land where we were born.

And then, the pandemic arrived.

2021: The Year of Mass Cremations and Discarded Bodies

April 2021: the second wave of COVID-19. I remember watching hospitals overflow, people gasping for oxygen, and families running from one place to another. We were promised world-class healthcare, modern cities, and a ‘Vishwa Guru’ India. Instead, we saw bodies floating in the Ganga, abandoned by the very country they were born in.

We had bullet trains in the headlines but no oxygen in hospitals. We had digital payment systems but no dignity in death.

How is this modernity?

2023-2024: Women Wrestlers, Manipur, and the Illusion of Justice

When I saw India’s top female wrestlers sitting in protest, accusing a powerful official of sexual harassment, I knew that we hadn’t moved an inch from where we were in 2012. Even Olympic medals couldn’t buy them justice.

In Manipur, an entire community burned for months, women were paraded naked in broad daylight, and the country watched in silence. Modernity is supposed to mean equal treatment of all citizens, the rule of law, and swift justice.

But here we are—some people are untouchable by the law, while others are disposable.

So, Where Does That Leave Us?

If modernity was supposed to mean a society that values rationality over religion, equality over hierarchy, rights over rituals, and freedom over fear, then I don’t know what I have been living in for the past 25 years.

India today is more connected, more digital, and more consumer-driven. But are we more free, more equal, more just?

Or have we simply found new ways to keep the old regressions alive, dressing them up in the language of development, nationalism, and progress?

Dipankar Gupta fired the pistol on the race towards modernity 25 years ago. I’m still standing at the starting line, wondering if the race was ever real.

References

Gupta, Dipankar. (2000). Mistaken Modernity: India Between Worlds. New Delhi: HarperCollins

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Kamal Choudhary is a PhD student at the Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi. He is working on the recent second home and retirement home-based migration and investments in the hills of Uttarakhand, India, tracing the motivation for such investments and the urbanism created consequently.