Explained : Galgotias Robot Row Exposes Modi-Era Spectacle Politics and Its Impact

The spectacle of a Chinese robot, displayed by Galgotias University at a Delhi Artificial Intelligence fair and passed off as a domestic “invention,” has made the institution an object of global ridicule. Yet the derision directed at Galgotias spills over onto India itself. How did such a brazen deception find space in an arena of such purported prestige—an event where the Prime Minister’s image was the primary currency?

The question is not merely academic. In India today, nothing is undertaken for the sake of the republic; everything is staged for the Prime Minister. The choreographed grandeur of a G20 summit, the spectacle of a sporting meet, this very exhibition of AI—the underlying logic is singular and sycophantic. Everything is for him and because of him.

Every national occurrence, in our contemporary public discourse, is framed as an act of grace by Narendra Modi, performed for his glory. India was some obscure country before him; it is only his efforts that have made it visible to the world. Observers from outside India noted and wrote that the whole event resembled an exercise in promoting the brand of Narendra Modi.

The anxiety here is less about the erosion of India’s international standing and more about damage to the Prime Minister’s carefully curated persona. The Galgotias episode recalls a man stepping into the sunlight in a spotless, starched kurta, only to have a sudden clod of mud ruin the image. One suspects Galgotias is being castigated not for its fraud, but for the tactical error of damaging the “brand.” The episode raises a harder question: how did they find the audacity? Perhaps they assumed that the monopoly on deception, so effectively wielded by the Prime Minister and his party, could be shared by ideological allies.

People are asking who vetted the credentials of Galgotias University. Who opened the doors of this fair to them? Even before the claim of originality was exposed, a Union Minister had already bestowed public endorsement upon it. Do our ministers now affix a sovereign seal to every claim without scrutiny? He deleted his post after the uproar but did not apologise.

Perhaps such expectations are naive. When the Prime Minister himself suggests that ancient Indian “wisdom” included stem cell technology—proven, he said, by the birth of the Kauravas—or that the first organ transplant was performed by a divine surgeon who placed an elephant’s head on Ganesha, the boundary between myth and empirical fact dissolves. When the Prime Minister tells the youth that tea can be brewed using gas harvested from a gutter, why should a university feel tethered to the constraints of truth? When imagination replaces inquiry at the highest levels, Galgotias is merely a diligent student of the prevailing climate.

A culture of managed untruth

We express outrage at Galgotias, yet for over a decade we have breathed an atmosphere saturated with official untruths. We are told that the Prime Minister’s falsehoods are not moral failings but “strategic compulsions.” He must speak them to mobilise the masses during elections; he must sustain them afterwards to keep “national morale” aloft. The media and the faithful instruct us to ignore the literal word and instead appreciate the “intention”—a supposedly noble desire to inspire the nation through fabrication.

Galgotias, when cornered, fell back on the same script. The university spoke of a “slip of the tongue” and “misunderstandings.” It wrapped itself in the tricolour, claiming to be a “national asset” whose noble mission should not be eclipsed by a single “error.” It cast itself as a martyr for the youth, arguing that criticism amounts to dampening the national spirit. The institution claimed to be articulating and realising the grand vision of the Prime Minister himself. Small missteps in this ambitious journey, it implied, must be overlooked.

A student from the university defended the institution with a chillingly familiar logic: the robot was merely a “demonstration of possibility.” When the university’s accreditation was questioned, another student pivoted instantly to the state-sponsored bogeyman—why worry about Galgotias, he asked, when JNU, that supposed nursery of “traitors,” still exists?

This rhetoric is not accidental. These are the same students seen at Jantar Mantar, raising slogans against the Leader of the Opposition without appearing to know why they were there—because the administration had commanded them to go. This explains the brazenness on display: there is no shame where there is no independent conscience. There is only the performance of loyalty.

Rankings, fraud, and the Vishwa Guru fantasy

The higher-education commentator Maheshwar Peri has observed that Galgotias is not an outlier but a symptom of systemic rot. The state rewards institutions on the basis of “rankings”—autonomy, new campuses, and the lucrative right to grant online degrees are all tethered to these metrics. The directive is clear: India must occupy space in global rankings so that the state can claim “Vishwa Guru” status every year, regardless of the hollowed-out reality beneath.

Institutions are driven into a race of numbers. They inflate research publications and patent filings to satisfy the gods of accreditation. Peri notes that some private universities claim research outputs that dwarf the collective efforts of all the IITs and institutes like the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Instead of scepticism, these impossible figures were met with state and public applause. We are witnessing the rise of degree factories designed to satisfy the government’s craving for high Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) statistics. If quality is never interrogated, the numbers look magnificent.

The state itself, under the BJP, has promoted this logic. It awarded the tag of “Institution of Eminence” to Jio Institute when the institution did not yet exist—it was merely an idea. Universities such as the University of Delhi were denied this honour in the same round. The state brazenly defended the indefensible, saying it was the promise of excellence that was being recognised.

Galgotias can invoke the same logic. The display of the robot, it might argue, was an expression of a possibility—a vision of what India could one day do. It was there to inspire students. The script is identical.

Why do we tolerate these lies? Because we cherish larger ones. For years the Prime Minister and his party have repeated them: that Muslims are taking away Hindu rights; that the Hindu population is shrinking; that Muslim men conspire to convert Hindu women; that infiltrators have overrun the country; that Christians are converting Hindus; that universities like JNU harbour anti-national elements; that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages; that India was once the teacher of the world.

We embrace these grand deceptions because they nourish our prejudices. And if we demand the right to believe that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages or that India was the world’s teacher, without a shred of evidence, we forfeit the moral standing to object when a university replaces local innovation with an import. Our tolerance for the fraud at Galgotias is the price we pay for our own investment in the politics of hate.

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Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University and writes literary and cultural criticism.