Published : Feb 26, 2026 14:48 IST – 6 MINS READ
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi shares his remarks during the Leaders’ Plenary session at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, in New Delhi on February 19, 2026. | Photo Credit: ANI
A hilarious aspect of our otherwise bleak world is how the government has unwittingly kept the public memory of its terribly managed and wholly embarrassing AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi last week fresh by pursuing vengeance against seven individuals in t-shirts. The case against them will continue to remind the world how ridiculous Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked with his constant faux bonhomie and unity, by holding and raising other men’s hands, and how Galgotia’s University shamed India by showcasing a Chinese robot as its own.
Nevertheless, a police commissioner as pompous as Jailor Hariram from Sholay and a judicial magistrate as funny as Justice Tripathi in Jolly LLB have charged the seven Indian Youth Congress protestors, and their chief Uday Bhanu Chib, with trying to incite a riot on Friday, February 20, at the Bharat Mandapam, where the AI Summit was gasping towards its finish line. Clips of the protest on social media show that these magnificent seven looked nothing like Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra, who was accused but never prosecuted for inciting an actual riot in northeast Delhi in February 2020 by saying “Goli maaro saalon ko”. No, these seven guys looked more happy-go-lucky, hiding their allegedly inflammatory t-shirts under their outerwear, and then stripping to show off the t-shirts that stated that “Modi is compromised”. They held up the shirts, and hence the shirtless protest.
It was a protest that was noticed, which is the whole purpose of a protest. Contrast it with the farmers’ protests exactly a week earlier, on the outskirts of Delhi, held against the proposed US-India trade deal announced by President Donald Trump that will open India to more agricultural imports from America, threatening the protected market. The farmers’ protest was buried in the newspapers, and incidentally, a similar farmers’ protest that was held in February 2024 had led the Central government and its cheerleaders to claim that the farmers were rioting. Not such a big news story, so no punitive action two years later.
Such are the terms of the deal—that Indian goods would attract a tariff of 18 per cent while American imports would have zero tariff—that it is natural to accuse Modi of selling out India’s agriculture and garment industry. He could have clarified the deal in Parliament, the Constitutional forum to do so, but Modi never condescends to clarify or debate any matter in Parliament; he only uses it to berate long-dead predecessors and to be feted by his sheep-like MPs (who congratulated his deal-making acumen with fragrant garlands).
Modi’s acumen is, in fact, questionable since Trump’s tariff regime, under the USA’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), was invalidated by the US Supreme Court hours after the shirtless protest. Trump has again hit the world with 10 per cent tariffs, under a different law that will last only 150 days. The real question is why the Indian trade negotiators did not wait for the US court decision (whose schedule was listed at the start of its term) instead of agreeing to Trump’s unilateral announcement. No wonder Commerce Minister Piyush Goel, whose sole talent is to shift all blame onto Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, has gone into hiding. The Congress accusation is that Modi surrendered strategic autonomy and hence, was compromised.
Going by the charges filed, Modi was clearly stung by being called compromised. Perhaps it stung as the slogan was in English, directed not at domestic voters but at the foreign delegates, the global tech executives, the diplomats, and the international media at the Summit. It stung because Modi is all about optics, not outcomes, and it disrupted the Summit’s main aim to burnish his artificial image as Vishwaguru. Modi was already hurting from the exposé that Galgotia’s University tried to pass off a Chinese robot as its own AI, a story that travelled around the world to even local TV stations in the US. It stung because even an India-born US official sniggered that India had no choice but to use American AI “stacks” and API, giving weight to the Congress charge that Modi had compromised Indian data.
Thus, the regime has termed the IYC protest “politically motivated”, masterminded by the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi. The police levelled hollow charges at the t-shirted fellas, and the magistrate threw them into judicial custody for good measure. Various TV anchors, “VIP Liberals”, senior print journalists, and even friends shook their heads at what they said was a tasteless protest that damaged India’s image. Ridiculous. If anything, it enhanced India’s image as a vibrant democracy where everyone has their say despite the creeping fascism and institutional decay; a country where not everyone is responsible for their PM’s cringeworthy behaviour on the global stage.
Additionally, the IYC protest was quite unlike the July 2004 protest, where a group of elderly Manipuri women stripped naked and held up signs saying “Indian Army Rape Us” in front of the Assam Rifles’ commander’s premises. It was a shocking protest that gave focus to a long-standing complaint from conflict zones in India: that the uniformed forces use rape as a weapon to subdue the local population (this is similar to the charge against the US military during the Vietnam War, or against UN forces in African countries like Congo and South Sudan, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina).
Protest is meant to be noticed. Yet the regime is so ashamed by its poorly managed summit that it is cutting its nose to spite its face, with heavy-handed action against the IYC boys. This will not only keep reminding everyone of the disastrous Summit but will bring “compromised” into the domestic political lexicon and will perhaps breathe life into the moribund Congress cadre. No matter how much Modi whines to mute crowds about the Congress party’s dirty tactics, or about how it shamed India on the world stage—a shame that he himself was responsible for—the fact is that India must thank the IYC for, in their merry way, cutting Modi down to size.
Aditya Sinha is a writer living in the outskirts of Delhi.
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