Undone by a meme: Mockery may have dealt a shock to the Modi-led regime – history shows why

On a chilly morning in December 1989, Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu stepped onto the balcony of the Communist Party headquarters in Bucharest to deliver a speech. The crowd was full with people holding up carrying massive pictures of the version of him, and of his wife Elena.

Ceaușescu was very particular about how he looked on photographs – a team made sure wrinkles were removed and any photo looked perfectly staged. The widely circulated large posters of him had him in his 40s, people in Romania marveled at how his official posters refused to age. Like an unfortunate analogy for South Indian movie stardom, the crowd waving posters of the yesteryear blockbuster, facing an arthritic live version.

At first, the event seemed to be going alright. There were the usual celebratory chants, revolutionary slogans being waved on large red banners, the perfected dictatorship-style choreographed clapping lining the speech. Then something unexpected happened. Someone booed, then another person booed, and another. Within seconds the entire crowd burst into aggressive heckling.

The leader, so used to complete obedience and speeches peppered with the chant “Ceaușescu și poporul” (Ceaușescu and the people) was suddenly caught on camera with an expression his pre-Photoshop airbrushed images hadn’t prepared people for. He...

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