[Reader-list] The republic day parade

[sudhir at circuit.sarai.net]

Dear Aman

Lord Curzon was of the view that 'legitimate' political authority in India 
was secured and embellished by the Royal spectacle. He took durbar
splendour and the royal procession practised by Indian princes to inspire a
sense of awe and veneration among the people at large.[The Dasara
processions in Mysore each year are another one of these elaborately staged
spectacles!] He sought to adopt these 'culturally' tuned modes of
exercising political authority to the needs of the British Empire. The
Indian republic continues with these formats almost unchanged.

Pratap Mehta argues persuasively that the civic liturgies of the Indian
republic do nothing to cultivate the sort of civic republicanism that a
country like ours needs. The article is pasted below.

Best
Sudhir

PRATAP BHANU METHA
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
We, the People of India...
There is a case to be made for Republic Day carrying at least as much
reverence and mystique as Independence Day. It would be foolish to
underestimate the importance, romance and even tragedy associated with
August 15. But January 26, 1950, is the day on which modern India acquired
form and substance. We constituted ourselves as a people. We adopted a
Constitution that spelt out the terms on which we ought to relate to each
other as citizens. Republic Day gives us a concrete moral identity as a
people.

In contrast to our religious festivals, which are colourful and
participatory, our civic liturgy is dull and boring. This may have
something to do with the fact that the State rather than the People are
more central to our civic celebrations than they are to our religious ones.
But even making allowance for this fact, there is something surprising
about the lack of passion we associate with the term republic. In most
discussions of the Preamble, this term is dismissed as warranting no
special meaning other than the connotation that our head of state is not a
monarch. All of us want to be democrats, few of us lay claim to the
heritage of being a republic.

The relationship between the terms democracy and republic is complicated.
In his opening speech to the Constituent Assembly, Nehru argued that adding
the word ‘democratic’ to the Preamble would be a redundant exercise,
because the term republic, contained the term democracy. Nevertheless we
are constituted as a democratic republic, not merely as a democracy or as a
republic.

As our subsequent history unfolded, the romance of democracy has
overshadowed the responsibilities of the republic. Being a republic carries
with it a set of associations that take us beyond democracy. Although the
term republic has become attenuated in its meaning, it is still not
entirely bereft of the substantive moral associations. Some of the
animating aspirations of a republican tradition are a powerful reminder of
how we can move beyond democracy as simply a mode of electing a government.
In a democracy, the people merely elect a government. But a republic is
constituted as a community of equals bound to each other by reciprocal
ties.

It is a new way of structuring social relations and the view we take of our
fellow citizens. The language of republicanism is unabashedly the language
of idealism. The republic is constituted by an allegiance to a common good
and to common liberties, which are all the more precious for being enjoyed
in common. While democracy can be compatible with a mere aggregation of
particularistic interests, a republican ideal enjoins the subordination of
goods that are distinctively particularistic, to attachment to goods that
we have in common. This is also reflected in their attitudes to the rule of
law. For a democracy, the rule of law is the expression of the whims of a
transient majority; for a republic it is an expression of common liberties.

This is why the republican tradition was vigilant about impediments to our
constituting ourselves as a community of equals. Monarchs, status
hierarchies, hereditary titles were one kind of impediment. But so were
acute concentrations of power, or subversion of the idea of reciprocity by
great social distance. This social distance could be the result of
inordinate disparities of wealth. Republicans favoured private property,
because this was necessary for securing independence. But they equally
insisted that it be widely diffused, so that property does not stand in the
way of acknowledging our fellow citizens. A republic has to guard against
subversion by mercantile interests, as it has to guard against
appropriation by aristocracy.

The term republic also carried the presumptive connotation that the people
were virtuous. But this virtue was not simply to be assumed, but actively
acquired through strenuous effort. The corruption of the polity they
worried about was a deeper form of corruption, more than merely rent
seeking by state officials. This was the kind of corruption that occurs
when the mass of citizens cease to be aware of the norms that should be
authoritative guides to their behaviour, at least vis-a vis other citizens.
A republic is a mandate to fight against the corruption of virtue itself.

A republic is also meant to be participatory. Participation is an
affirmation of each other as equals; it strengthens ties of reciprocity and
is an education in virtue. But perhaps, most importantly, the idea of a
republic was meant to be a statement of the overriding allegiances of its
citizens. By declaring ourselves to be a republic we agreed to be a
political community that shares a common fate, and is bound by a common
purpose. Again, this is not a thought that the term democracy alone
captures. But by declaring ourselves a republic, we also became something
more than a nation. For in a republic the basis of citizenship is fidelity
to the idea of the republic itself. It is not caste, class ethnicity or any
particular identity we wish to valorise. Behind the republican aspiration
is a politics where we address each other primarily as citizens, with the
same rights and prerogatives, not as members of particular communities. The
highest expression of the love of country is the love of the republic
itself — nothing more or nothing less.

The term republic sounds like an idealised fossil of a bygone age. Even in
the 17th century a republic represented an idealism that was thought to be
incompatible with the imperatives of a commercial society and with the
requirements of a large and complex modern society. After the French
Revolution three further objections were leveled against the idea of a
republic. The first was whether the quest for a common good was adequate to
representing the diversity that constituted the republic. The second was
whether the language of virtue and corruption was itself stultifying and
intolerant, more moralising than moral. And the third was whether elevating
allegiance to this community of equals as the highest ideal did not
subordinate private individuality too much at the altar of public virtue.

These remain potent worries. But it is equally true that no democracy has
long endured in a robust form without taking on board the values of a
republic: common good, civic virtue, vigilance against corrupting faction,
suspicion of social distance, and an allegiance to the constitution itself.
Perhaps Republic Day can be a reminder that we are still a democracy
waiting to be a republic.
 
URL: http://www.indian-express.com/columnists/full_column.php?content_id=63409