If the late 20th and early 21st centuries familiarised political theorists with the idea of a post-truth condition, contemporary India suggests the emergence of a more disquieting phenomenon—a post-shame era. Public life is no longer defined solely by disputes over facts, nor by the strategic manipulation of information. Rather, it is increasingly characterised by the erosion of embarrassment as a meaningful constraint on political action. What confronts democracy in India today is, therefore, not only an epistemic crisis but a transformation in the moral psychology of power.

Shame has historically occupied an ambiguous position within political theory: it is neither fully private nor entirely public, neither purely emotional nor wholly normative. Yet democratic societies have relied upon it as an informal mechanism of restraint. Where law cannot anticipate every abuse of authority, shame operates as a supplementary boundary signalling that certain actions, though technically permissible, violate shared ethical expectations. In this sense, shame constitutes part of the affective infrastructure of democracy, an internalised awareness that power must remain answerable to moral judgment.

The post-shame condition emerges when this internal restraint is replaced by an alternative logic of governance. Rather than fearing reputational damage, political actors cultivate indifference to criticism. Instead of apology, they perform defiance, and the refusal to acknowledge error becomes a demonstration of strength. Such a transformation does not arise spontaneously; it reflects a broader reconfiguration of power and subjectivity.

Fragility of factual reality

Modern forms of power, as critical theorists have observed, do not operate solely through coercion but through the production of compliant subjects. Earlier disciplinary regimes relied on surveillance and internalised norms to produce self-regulating citizens. Shame functioned as one of the key emotions through which individuals monitored their own conduct. When political authority repudiates shame, it signals a shift from disciplinary power towards a more theatrical mode—power that seeks not inward conformity but outward displays of loyalty. Citizens are encouraged not to evaluate authority morally but to identify with it emotionally.

This transformation has profound implications for democratic accountability because in a shame-sensitive polity, scandal generates pressure for explanation, resignation, or reform. In a post-shame polity, scandal is reframed as persecution, criticism as sabotage, and accountability as weakness. The public sphere ceases to function as a site of judgment and instead becomes an arena for competitive narrative construction. Truth is subordinated to resonance, and ethical evaluation gives way to partisan identification.

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The erosion of shame also alters the relationship between truth and politics as democratic theorists have long emphasised the fragility of factual reality within mass societies. Yet the contemporary moment suggests that the greater danger lies not merely in the distortion of facts but in the disappearance of the emotional responses that once accompanied their violation. When suffering, injustice, or policy failure no longer produces embarrassment among those responsible, the moral significance of truth itself diminishes. Facts may still be contested, but their exposure no longer compels accountability at any level.

This condition is sustained by the transformation of the public sphere into a space of spectacle. Politics increasingly assumes the form of performance, privileging visibility over deliberation. Grand gestures, symbolic acts, and leader-centric narratives displace procedural governance. The aestheticisation of power reduces citizens to spectators whose role is to applaud rather than to scrutinise. In such an environment, shame becomes incompatible with authority, for performance demands confidence, not contrition.

The post-shame era must also be understood in relation to the sociology of humiliation and dignity. Historically, shame has been unevenly distributed, imposed disproportionately upon marginalised communities while elites remained insulated from its force. Anti-caste movements, feminist struggles, and campaigns for minority rights sought to reverse this hierarchy by insisting that the powerful, not the vulnerable, should bear moral scrutiny. The democratic aspiration was not the abolition of shame but its redistribution.

In India, this project remains grossly incomplete because social hierarchies rooted in caste, gender, and religion continue to shape who is permitted dignity and who is subjected to humiliation. The post-shame condition complicates this landscape by allowing elites to evade moral accountability altogether while symbolic forms of shame continue to discipline the marginalised. The result is a paradoxical order in which shame persists as a tool of social control but disappears as a constraint on power.

The writings of B.R. Ambedkar illuminate the stakes of this transformation because for him democracy was not merely a constitutional arrangement, but a mode of associated living grounded in mutual respect. Social hierarchies that denied dignity to certain groups were incompatible with democratic morality. A political order that normalises shamelessness among rulers while sustaining humiliation among the oppressed represents a profound betrayal of this vision. It transforms democracy into a procedural shell devoid of ethical substance.

The post-shame condition also challenges liberal theories of justice that rely on the idea of public reason. In such frameworks, political actors are expected to justify their decisions in terms that other citizens can reasonably accept. This expectation presupposes a sensitivity to criticism and a willingness to revise one’s position in light of moral argument. When shamelessness becomes a political virtue, the motivational basis for public reason erodes. Justification is replaced by assertion, and dialogue by monologue.

Moreover, the disappearance of shame reshapes the temporal horizon of politics. Democratic accountability depends upon the capacity to learn from failure as admission of error creates the possibility of correction. Shameless governance, by contrast, converts failure into triumph through narrative reinterpretation. Policy disasters are reframed as necessary sacrifices; administrative breakdowns become evidence of decisive leadership. Without the acknowledgment of failure, institutional learning becomes impossible and we all have seen such things in abundance in recent times.

Nationalism plays a crucial role in sustaining this dynamic as it has been seen that by conflating criticism of government with hostility to the nation, political authority insulates itself from moral scrutiny. Citizens are encouraged to experience dissent as betrayal rather than as participation in democratic oversight. The nation becomes an affective shield protecting power from embarrassment. In extreme cases, repression is enacted not discreetly but demonstratively, signalling that authority stands beyond reproach.

The long-term consequences of the post-shame era are corrosive because democracies do not collapse solely through coups or constitutional breakdowns; they erode when the ethical expectations that animate institutions are hollowed out. When citizens cease to expect remorse from leaders who preside over suffering, the moral contract between rulers and ruled dissolves. Power persists, but legitimacy thins, yet the disappearance of shame is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Emotions are socially cultivated, and political cultures can change. Restoring democratic accountability requires re-establishing the expectation that authority must remain sensitive to moral judgment. This does not entail a return to punitive forms of shame that stigmatise vulnerability. Rather, it involves redirecting ethical scrutiny towards the abuse of power and the neglect of public welfare.

Necessity for moral restraint

Civil society, independent media, and autonomous institutions play a crucial role in this process by sustaining spaces where criticism can be articulated without fear. Equally important is the cultivation of a civic ethos that values humility as a democratic virtue. Apology, course correction, and responsiveness should be recognised not as signs of weakness but as indicators of responsible leadership and a sensitive political climate.

The post-shame era thus represents a profound challenge to democratic theory and practice. It exposes the limits of institutional design by demonstrating that constitutional frameworks cannot function without supporting moral emotions. Democracy depends not only on procedures and rights but also on an affective culture that renders power answerable to those it governs.

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If India is to preserve the ethical core of its democratic experiment, it must recover the capacity for collective embarrassment in the face of injustice. Shame, properly directed, is not an enemy of freedom but a safeguard against the excesses of authority. Without it, politics risks devolving into a spectacle of domination untempered by self-reflection.

In the absence of moral restraint, a republic may retain its formal structures while losing its democratic spirit. Elections will continue, institutions will endure in name, and the language of constitutionalism will persist. Yet the animating principle of accountability; the expectation that rulers should feel answerable to the suffering of citizens will have faded. What remains is a scooped-out democracy. A democracy which otherwise is intact in appearance but diminished in substance, and suspended in a post-shame condition where power no longer recognises the ethical limits that once defined it.

Professor Manoj Kumar Jha is a member of the Rajya Sabha from the Rashtriya Janata Dal.