6 min readFeb 28, 2026 06:18 AM IST First published on: Feb 28, 2026 at 06:18 AM ISTThe Captive Mind, Czesław Miłosz’s searing anatomy of authoritarianism, tells a story drawn from an older Polish novel by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Insatiability. Europe is about to be overrun by a Sino-Mongolian army that dominates from the Pacific to the Baltic. The country facing invasion is unhappy and paralysed. Suddenly, hawkers appear, peddling something called the “Murti-Bing” pill. Those who take it become so happy that they do not even regard colonisation as a tragedy for their civilisation. They adapt cheerfully to their new rulers.Miłosz’s book is a catalogue of the many Murti-Bing pills by which citizens, but especially intellectuals, justified submission to power: Ideological adjustment, self-deception and fear. But even he might not have reckoned that the most effective Murti-Bing pill of our time would be something called “realism” in both international and domestic affairs. In India, realism presents itself as tough-minded and unsentimental. It claims to grasp the world as it is. It prides itself on puncturing the illusions of moralists. In its imagination, moralists are mere sloganeers, whining away. Realism invokes prudence and responsibility, contrasting them with what it portrays as empty idealism.AdvertisementWe are told in international relations to “understand the nature of power”. We must adapt to new imperial realities. Of course, bargains with the United States will be asymmetrical; you are dealing with a more powerful actor. Only a dimwit would fail to grasp this. Offering moral carte blanche to Israel, as our Prime Minister recently did, is described as realism. To question such policies is to indulge in moral narcissism. It is manlier to accept the world of power and adapt, any talk of justice be damned.This supposed realism in international affairs also has an exact domestic analogue. When faced with authoritarian tendencies at home, citizens are told not to ask what their rights are, but to understand how power works and adapt accordingly. Speaking up is naïve. Protesting is foolish. Pointing out that the emperor has no clothes is irresponsible. The logic is identical: Power is truth. Take the Murti-Bing pill of realism and you will sleep soundly. As Miłosz understood, this narcotic sustains both imperialism and authoritarianism.India needs to be aware of this self-deception. Realists will often lend more succour to imperialists and authoritarians than ideological zealots ever could, because they cloak adaptation in the language of truth. Any serious thinker knows that moral aspiration collides with constraint. Conviction without understanding causal realities can shade into irresponsibility. As Max Weber, a realist of a different mould, reminded us, political action requires an ethics of responsibility, not mere purity of conviction.AdvertisementBut our contemporary realists are not exemplars of tragic wisdom. They practise a subtler alchemy. Miłosz charted the shift whereby we move from a moral question — is this right? — to a seemingly sober question: Is this historically possible? The twist is that historical possibility quietly becomes “whatever those in power declare feasible”. What presents itself as analysis becomes a counsel of submission.Three features define this contemporary Indian realism. First, in international relations, whatever the regime does is christened realist. Submit to American primacy: Realist. Stand up to China: Realist. Engage China: Realist. Buy oil from Russia: Realist. Stop buying oil from Russia: Realist. Placate Benjamin Netanyahu: Realist. Placate Saudi Arabia: Realist. Start a war: Realist. Avoid a war: Realist. Realism here has no criteria independent of power’s choices. It does not discipline policy, it ratifies it. This is not tragic responsibility. It is an adaptive preference-formation in service of authority — the Murti-Bing pill administered after the fact.Second, this realism reveals a curious psychological affinity between imperialism abroad and authoritarianism at home. Anti-imperialism and anti-authoritarianism should spring from the same disposition: Resistance to arbitrary and concentrated power. Yet, the habit of submitting to global hierarchies in the name of historical necessity easily mutates into submission to domestic concentration of power. The underlying disposition is the same.you may likeThird, this realism suffers from a striking lack of imagination. Miłosz’s deepest complaint against those who accommodated authoritarianism was not that they were wicked, but that they ceased to think. Appeals to necessity, historical or geopolitical, foreclose political options. Moralists can indeed hide behind slogans. But at least they preserve the possibility that the world might be otherwise. All boundaries are first pushed in the imagination. The comfort of contemporary realism is to insist that adaptation to power is all there is. In doing so, the realist forecloses the possibility of alternative political action. Often, you open up new spaces and possibilities by trying out new forms of political action, not by taking the constraints of power as fixed.Realism promises toughness. In practice, it produces softness: Softness toward power, hardness toward the powerless. This is why the damage realism does is so corrosive. It becomes a “suck up, kick down” philosophy. Many well-intentioned realist friends will counsel, “do not criticise Donald Trump or Narendra Modi”. They do so not because they might disagree on the substance of the criticism but because it is apparently imprudent. In the next breath, however, they will excoriate a minor bureaucrat, a small-time swindler, a protestor blocking traffic, or even the leader of the Opposition, or some middle-power country. If prudence demands silence before concentrating on executive power, why does it not demand restraint before lesser actors? If power must always be accommodated, why is this accommodation selectively upward? It tells you more about the courage of the realist than it tells you about the demands of the world. If your philosophy of criticism is that you will stay silent in the face of massive power, you ought to forfeit even the right to criticise minions.The realist uses adaptation to power like a Murti-Bing pill, passing off abdication as wisdom. No wonder we are more genuflecting to imperialism now than when we were weak, and happier with authoritarianism than when we were poorer. This kind of realism is seldom on the side of the future.The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express