In the five days since the Aam Aadmi Party stripped Raghav Chadha of his position as deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, the MP has fought back with reels, iconic Bollywood dialogues, and finally, a highlighted page from Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, a book that prison authorities across America consider too dangerous to allow behind bars.
On April 6, Chadha–who had spent the week defending himself against allegations that he had softened his opposition to the ruling BJP–posted a carousel of three photographs on Instagram: the first showed him reading Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power in a garden, the book’s distinctive orange and blue cover clearly visible; the second, the caption: “Somebody gifted me a book this week. The timing is hard to ignore. I turned to chapter 1 — Never Outshine The Master. Some books arrive exactly when they are meant to;” the third, the opening chapter, with the words ‘NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER’ highlighted in yellow.
“Funny how timing works,” he wrote , indicating that his fall from grace had to do with him violating the very first rule in the book.
Published in 1998, Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power is a manual for surviving proximity to power. The laws cover everything from how to use absence to increase your value, to how to crush an enemy, to–the one Chadha refers to–how to survive being more talented than the person above you.
What is the Rule 1
A screenshot of Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power. (Instagram/@raghavchadha88)
Greene opens Law 1 with the story of Nicolas Fouquet, finance minister to Louis XIV, the then King of France.
In 1661, Fouquet threw a party at his château, Vaux-le-Vicomte, to mark its completion. It was a creation so marvelous that the grounds and fountains would later inspire Versailles. On top of it, he commissioned Molière to write a play for the occasion.
The nobility was all praise, but the king felt outshone and in a jealous rage had Fouquet arrested the next morning on charges of corruption. The minister who dared outshine the royal splendour spent the last 20 years of his life in solitary confinement.
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“Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite–inspire fear and insecurity,” the judgement below Rule 1 reads. “Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.”
The reason Greene places it above all the other rules is because he too was once ousted from the job by doing too well. Speaking on The James Altucher Show in December 2023, Greene said: “I had a job on a television show as a researcher. I ran afoul of my boss and I got fired. That person probably thought: this young kid thinks he’s better than I am. I made her insecure, and therefore I suffered.”
A chartered accountant who joined AAP at its founding in 2012, Chadha became its youngest national spokesperson, won a Delhi assembly seat by 20,000 votes, and then architected the 2022 Punjab campaign that delivered AAP a 92-seat landslide. He had, as per many accounts, become the most visible unelected figure in Punjab.
He is certainly shining bright, but whether he has outshone the supremo or not is something for the political pundits to argue over. What bibliophiles might find more interesting is the book that has captured his attention in his hour of political turbulence.
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What is the book about?
Three decades old, never out of print, and one of the most popular books in Indian bookstores. Hip-hop artists swear by it. So do Silicon Valley executives, prison inmates, and now, apparently, Indian parliamentarians.
Greene himself has acknowledges the laws are situational — correct in one context, egregious in another. In the tradition of Kautilya’s Arthashastra, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Baltasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom, it draws on figures as varied as Sun Tzu, Talleyrand, P.T. Barnum, and Haile Selassie. The company alone tells you something.
Eyes on Rule 48: the most dangerous
The 47 other laws deserve a piece of their own. But some that Chadha might have come across, include conceal your intentions, say less than necessary, use absence to increase respect, do not commit to anyone, keep your hands clean, master the art of timing, never appear too perfect.
And, should when all else fails, Law 48: assume formlessness, essentially defenestrate all other rules and adapt. This is one Raghav would benefit the most from.
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Chadha will remain a Rajya Sabha member until 2028, and the Punjab elections are in 2027. At the moment he has no formal role, and no declared next move, he is essentially formless.
A screenshot of Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power. (Instagram/@raghavchadha88)