Close on the heels of a public prosecutor suggesting that a fascist establishment runs India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has lamented what he described as the tendency to brand as "autocrats" those who enforce discipline.


"... Hamare desh ki sthiti aisi hai ki discipline ko undemocratic keh dena aaj kal saral ho gaya hai. Koi thoda sa discipline aagrah kare, mar gaya woh... 'autocrat hai'... pata nahin, saari dictionary khol dete hain (The state of the nation is such that nowadays it has become easy to bill discipline as undemocratic. Whoever aspires to a little discipline is doomed. They are called autocrats and what not. The entire dictionary is riffled through to find words)," Modi said on Sunday.


The occasion was the launch of a book on Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu's one year in office and the context was Naidu's reputation as a disciplinarian. Read more