The Great War ended in November 1918. India's contribution had been immense: over a million soldiers, billions of pounds in aid and resources. Yet, her reward was negligible. The British, exhausted by the war, offered meager reforms, retaining absolute control. The Indian National Congress, which had largely supported the war effort in hopes of self-rule, found itself sidelined and ineffective. Their appeals for greater autonomy felt hollow, their petitions ignored.
Adav, watching from his penthouse office in Bombay, saw the predictable outcome. The Congress's reliance on moral appeals and gradualism was a "design flaw" he intended to exploit. Through his widespread media influence, subtly exerted through the publications funded by Bharat Corporation, he began to champion a new message, a stark contrast to the Congress's pleas.
Newspaper editorials, often anonymous or attributed to fictional "economic analysts," hammered home a single point: "The age of petitions is over. The age of power has begun." They argued that India had earned its freedom not through loyalty, but through its indispensable economic contribution to the war. They criticized the Congress for its weakness, its lack of a clear, actionable plan for true independence. Adav was setting the stage, carving out a vacuum in the Indian political landscape for his chosen instrument.
The British, celebrating their victory, barely noticed this shift in Indian public discourse. They focused on their dwindling colonial profits and the lingering post-war global instability. They failed to grasp that the very economic might they had squeezed from India was now being weaponized against them, turning their victory into the prelude to their inevitable decline.