Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to Ethiopia’s Parliament was wrapped in warmth and symbolism, but it also echoed a familiar Ethiopianist storyline: a seamless, timeless national narrative that quietly sidesteps conquest, forced assimilation, and the lived realities of Oromo and other oppressed peoples. When the leader of the world’s largest democracy lends prestige to that framing—amid today’s grave human-rights and displacement crises—disappointment is not only understandable, but inevitable.