This Republic Day, Let’s Focus On the Big Threat Our Nation Faces

This Republic Day we would do well to appreciate what our republican ideals are and recognise how they extend to us.

Illustration used for representational purposes.

(Photo: Susnata Paul / The Quint)

The Constitution, which we, the people of India, gave ourselves came into force on 26 January 1950, a date since marked as Republic Day in the national calendar. Even as we prepare to celebrate the 69th anniversary of the event and the many positive ways in which the document continues to influence our lives, reflection on where we currently stand with respect to its republican aspirations, are in order too.

While most modern nation-states have gone on to imbibe the features of both democracies and republics (so much so that ‘pure’ democracies do not exist anymore), it is useful to remind ourselves that a ‘pure’ democracy and a republic – despite both advocating a central role for the people in choosing their governments – differ in a fundamental way.

Not a Pure Democracy, Not a Pure Republic

A ‘pure democracy’ refers to the rule of an omnipotent majority, subjecting the freedom and choice of the minority to the approval of the majority; a ‘republic’ envisages the rule of law, guarding against the tyranny of the majority by offering certain inalienable rights to all citizens, rights that cannot be taken away by the majority and elected governments.

In a still broader sense, a republic commits itself to protecting every citizen against abuse of power, even if it is accumulated by democratic means.

The preamble to the Constitution refers to India as a ‘democratic republic’, reflecting the framers’ vision of a nation where citizens would enjoy the freedoms and choices that mark a healthy democracy and the constitutional and legal protections that a republic affords. The commitment to the democratic project, then, was firm, but not blind to the threat of elite capture and majoritarianism.

Dignity for All: A Distant Dream

Looking back, it is safe to say that the spaces created by the Constitution have permitted assertions by a host of hitherto marginalised groups, enabling articulations of their positions and demands and, occasionally, catapulting them to seats on high tables where governance priorities are set.

That being said, the injustices and tragedies that unfold around us on a daily basis (and go on to make depressing aggregate statistics) suggest that there is much distance to be traversed before Indians, irrespective of caste, gender, religion, class or linguistic group, experience empowerment and dignity.

A deeply hierarchical society was hardly fertile ground for seeding a democratic republic, and the mixed report card before us reflects both the achievements and ongoing struggles of ordinary citizens in negotiating and re-setting power equations with the entrenched elite. 

Enlightened constitutional provisions have abetted the achievements, their sabotage via institutions, social networks and violence explain the struggles.

Threats to Our Secular Republic

Importantly, the danger of sabotage to individual rights has prompted the marginalised to draw on their collective heft in their struggles. Primarily intended to harness numerical strength with a view to re-ordering things from elected positions of power, it, despite the co-options and blind pursuit of office and crude play of vote bank politics by some, has not been a strategy entirely without dividend.

An example, for instance, is the far-reaching changes triggered by the likes of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mayawati.

It is clear though that the gains have relied far more on the exercise of numerical strength than on the institutions and arrangements mandated to deliver the republican guarantee to the individual.

Another threat to the Constitution’s republican aspirations comes from majoritarianism. Shaped and propagated over a number of years, the Hindutva agenda – located in the imagination of India as a ‘Hindu rashtra’, where accommodation of religious minorities is conditional to their alignment with the Hindutvavadi’s diktat – has gradually shed its public tentativeness.

And now, having played a key role in the political rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindutva Brigade feels emboldened enough to pursue its objects unfettered.

What religious minorities eat, study and protest, who they love and marry, how they celebrate their festivals and express their love for nation, the public events they join, etc, are increasingly difficult for them to decide on their own.

Vigilantes in nationalist garb lurk, looking for anything – a food item, a slogan, a person, a conversation snippet, a song, a social media post – that disagrees with their sensibilities and hence, counts as an insult to the majority and, by extension, the nation. Retaliation can be anything from a verbal threat to a killing. The tyrannies of the majority the republic hopes to check are here.

To be accurate, the Hindutva Brigade has yet to tinker with the Constitution, and its excesses have largely been enabled through the ‘backdoor’ influence its electoral ascendance has ensured among public institutions.

Honorable exceptions aside, our institutions have been remarkably pliant when it comes to furthering ruling establishments’ interests, and it is this old malaise that Hindutva is piggybacking on. If they leaned towards the elite in the elite-subaltern turf wars, it is to the added beat of majoritarianism they sway now.

The republican ideal, of course, expects them to stand upright. With the individual citizen, in her quest for what the Constitution entitles her to. This Republic Day we would do well to appreciate what those are, and recognise how they extend to us and, in no less or greater measure, to every other Indian.

Happy Republic Day.

(Manish Dubey is a policy analyst and crime fiction writer and can be contacted @ManishDubey1972. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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