1967
There are decisions knowledge makes easier.
And there are decisions knowledge poisons.
This was the second kind.
I had always believed that knowing the future granted clarity.
It does not.
It grants restraint.
And restraint, I was learning, has a boundary it cannot cross without becoming tyranny.
India stood at that boundary.
The country was no longer fragile. It was no longer patient. It was no longer content to exist between definitions.
It wanted direction.
Not management.
Meaning.
I knew what the future held along each path.
I knew the cost of declaration.I knew the cost of delay.I knew which alliances would harden, which rivalries would escalate, which reforms would be postponed again under louder slogans.
That knowledge should have made the choice simple.
It made it impossible.
Because every path I could see was mine.
Chosen with foresight.
Engineered to minimize damage.
Optimized to avoid collapse.
And that was the problem.
If I chose now, India would not be choosing.
It would be following.
Following a future it did not understand, toward consequences it did not consent to.
I would be replacing colonial inheritance with prophetic governance.
Different language.
Same sin.
I thought of everything restraint had done.
It had preserved institutions.
It had created capability.
It had prevented disasters history would later take for granted.
But restraint cannot create belief.
Belief must be risked.
This was the moment foresight became illegitimate.
The moment where knowing too much made me the wrong person to decide.
I sat with the drafts prepared by others.
Doctrines with confident language. Speeches that promised clarity. Frameworks that replaced ambiguity with allegiance.
Each was flawed.
Each was honest.
Each reflected a different India.
I realized then that my role was no longer to choose the correct future.
It was to ensure India could survive choosing the wrong one.
That had always been the real task.
So I did something that felt like failure.
I stepped back.
Not publicly.
Not dramatically.
I loosened my grip.
I allowed debate to surface unfiltered.
I stopped editing uncertainty out of discussions.
I resisted the instinct to redirect arguments toward outcomes I knew would be safer.
The country would argue.
It would polarize.
It would make mistakes.
But they would be its mistakes.
This was harder than intervention ever had been.
Intervention feels like responsibility.
Withdrawal feels like abandonment.
I wrote the final line in my private notebook, knowing it ended my usefulness as a time traveler:
"The future must now diverge."
If it did not, India would never truly be free.
I was not afraid of what came next.
I was afraid that my presence might prevent it.
So I became quieter.
Less decisive.
More human.
History would judge the outcomes.
Not the intentions.
That was how it should be.
I closed the notebook.
Not because there was nothing left to know.
But because knowing was no longer the point.