The Trolling of Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri Shows What Hate Does

Governments Must Recognise That Hate Eventually Turns Inward

May 12, 2025

Hate distorts what we expect from our governments. It teaches us to demand emotion over reason, revenge over restraint and spectacle over seriousness. It normalises irrationality. And when governments allow or tacitly support this hate to spread unchecked, it doesn’t remain focused on the supposed enemy—it turns inward, undermining public servants, weakening institutions, and sabotaging the very public interest it claims to defend. The online targeting of Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri is a clear example.

On May 11, Misri delivered a routine—though significant—statement on behalf of the Indian government. After Pakistan violated a newly brokered ceasefire, Misri made it clear that India had taken note, that violations would be met with firmness and that the ceasefire deal remained in place. This was not his personal opinion. It was a message conveyed by a career diplomat, under instruction, shaped by the realities of military and diplomatic strategy.

But that wasn’t good enough for the angry online chorus. Having been fed on hate for a long time, they no longer wanted clarity—they wanted rage. They wanted language that scorched the air. And when they didn’t get it, they turned on Misri—and then, shamefully, on his daughter.

The trolls weren’t asking whether even a fragile ceasefire could reduce deaths—of civilians and soldiers, who, like all of us, are human. They weren’t questioning whether sustained escalation would harm India’s economy, strain military resources or distract from the country’s governance challenges. They weren’t engaging with substance at all. They were looking for fury and chest-thumping. And they punished professionalism because it didn’t perform their script.

This is what hate does: it pushes people to expect violent emotion from institutions that are meant to be rational and deliberative. It makes them see restraint as weakness. It rewires public opinion so that diplomacy becomes suspect and civil servants are accused of betrayal for doing their jobs. Even family members aren’t spared, as the abuse aimed at the Foreign Secretary’s daughter Didon Misri shows. She was attacked for a law school internship years ago and accused of sympathising with the Rohingyas at the time—as if they were not human beings with the right to flee violence and seek safety.

Every government has finite time, resources and attention. When public discourse is consumed by the thirst for retaliation, the real costs of conflict are pushed aside. A military escalation is about lives lost, children orphaned, families broken and budgets redirected away from hospitals, schools and food security. A war economy doesn’t build roads or schools. It delays justice. It weakens every other promise a government owes its people.

Hate demands that these costs be ignored. It insists that nothing matters more than punishing the “other.” That’s why, when the government signals caution—even if paired with firmness—it’s branded as cowardly. That’s why a diplomat can’t just be a messenger, and policymakers can’t rely on academic rigour—they’re expected to be warriors. That’s why hate doesn’t want an honest reckoning with the trade-offs of war. It wants a show.

But when the show turns inward—when hate finds no one else to target—it eats its own. A civil servant becomes a scapegoat. An apolitical officer becomes the target of a loyalty test. And a government that tolerates or promotes this culture of outrage eventually finds itself boxed in—unable to govern with maturity, having cultivated a public that rejects the very maturity needed for sound governance and sustained popular support.

The real casualty here is not just Misri’s peace of mind. It’s the idea that statecraft requires thought, that policy must be weighed, that national interest is something deeper than hashtags and anger. Public servants are being told not to act in the interest of the public—but in the interest of the mob. This reversal is dangerous.

When officials are punished for not sounding militant enough, when a ceasefire is taken as a betrayal, when trolls are louder than lawmakers, something fundamental is breaking. Governance is no longer about solving problems—it becomes about surviving public tantrums. That’s no way to run a country.

Let’s not shame competence, degrade service, or turn the citizen from participant to spectator—cheering destruction without asking who pays for the rubble. Because if hate continues to rule the public square, the costs won’t be borne by Pakistan, or any foreign enemy. They’ll be borne by India—its citizens, its institutions and the professionals who once kept the machine running.

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