India, Feb. 21 -- Every rebellion imagines itself as the subject of history: we, the people, are acting; we are choosing; we are remaking the world. But look more carefully, and a disturbing possibility emerges. The crowd that fills the streets is not the author of the revolution; it is the instrument. The real author is the unexamined conditioning that moves through every individual in that crowd, the same conditioning that built the system now being torn down, the same fears and hungers that installed the tyrant now being deposed, and that will, given time, install his replacement. The crowd believes it is acting; it is being acted upon by its own unexamined interior.

This is not a theoretical claim. It is a pattern so consistent acros...