India must flex reason rather than muscle in honour of its republic

Three-quarters of a century ago, whether democracy would endure was seen as our big challenge. In his last address to the Constituent Assembly after the ‘final reading’ of the Constitution, on 25 November 1949, B.R. Ambedkar made a case for ‘social democracy,’ based on a union of liberty, equality and fraternity. If any of these were to be divorced from the other, he held, it would defeat “the very purpose of democracy.” 

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The weak link, in his view, was equality: “On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter a life of contradictions. In politics, we will have equality, and in social and economic life we will have inequality.” 

Equality denied for too long in the two other spheres, he feared, would imperil our political democracy. It was India’s status and credentials as a republic, though, that pre-occupied him in the years to follow.

In the West, the concept rode into public awareness on the back of revolutions. 

In France, royalty was ousted from power in a fit of hair-raising fury, but America snapped apart from the yoke of Britain’s monarchy by calmly declaring itself free before it sent ‘redcoats’ packing. 

In both cases, arguably, the stage was set by the 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine, a French immigrant, in the US. 

While its basic point was that an oppressor could not possibly protect people, the primary purpose of government, the blow his essay landed on anybody’s ‘divine right’ to rule made it an ode to the republican ideal, as encoded in the rule of law. “For as in absolute governments the King is law,” argued Paine, “so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”

Back home, it should not surprise us that Ambedkar, who had grappled with the “graded inequality” of caste heritage, sought relief from inherited authority across all of Indian society. 

Today, it’s hard to tell if people accord republican ideals much value, even though our electoral democracy is held dear. 

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On the right, some argue that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign against dynastic politics has driven home the idea of a republic, making it harder for descendants of well-known leaders to get far in the political arena. On the left, some reckon that political appeals drawn from olden times have stalled the idea’s progress.

Regardless of its explicit advance, arguments over inheritance and privilege are likely to go on. This in itself may be seen as a republican victory of sorts.

Yet, in the social sphere, while caste is often used to mobilize votes, its lineage link stays in place.

In our economic life, to the extent prosperity relies on market forces and the right to property, the heft of inherited wealth cannot be wished away. Nor, for practical reasons, should it.

Soviet-style economic models that tried to flatten ownership saw their incentives for value-generation collapse. The rise of Communist China, notably, only followed its market pivot. The emergence of our remixed economy is a similar story. It took a rational rethink of economic policy.

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Whatever the ideals pursued, a republic evolves through the active exercise of reason in a contemporary context. Even the sudden rise of ‘reasoning’ models of artificial intelligence implies that the future may belong to countries that deploy reason well. The power India can wield might well be shaped by it.