Revolutions always promise change, and they usually deliver something that merely looks like change. But what is rarely asked is what must change. They speak endlessly about systems, rulers, laws, and institutions, yet remain silent about the one who demands, sustains, and replaces those systems. Regimes collapse, flags are replaced, slogans change, but something remains untouched. The anger finds new targets, the demand itself does not.
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Originally published in The Pioneer on 31 jan '26
Revolutions always promise change, and they usually deliver something that merely looks like change. But what is rarely asked is what must change. They speak endlessly about systems, rulers, laws, and institutions, yet remain silent about the one who demands, sustains, and replaces those systems. Regimes collapse, flags are replaced, slogans change, but something remains untouched. The anger finds new targets, the demand itself does not.
Iran offers a stark illustration.
In 1979, Iranians overthrew a tyrant in the name of liberation; forty-six years later, their children are dying in the streets to overthrow the liberators. What began as the Islamic Revolution now feels, to large parts of its own population, like Islamic oppression, and the population that once welcomed Khomeini now turns on his successors with the same intensity. This is not irony, nor is it history repeating itself.
