Republic vs Nation

February 22, 2016 13:41

'When vigilante 'justice' is publicly celebrated by majoritarian mobs and winked at by complicit policemen, the rules by which republics live, shrivel a little. If this happens often enough, republican institutions begin to defer to a bullying nationalism.

'The Indian Constitution didn't define a nation, it designed a republic. When politicians begin to use a super-heated nationalism to bypass republican processes and intimidate republican institutions, they risk turning a benign political body into a brutal leviathan.

'It isn't railing students, spitting into the wind, who threaten India. The integrity of the republic is menaced by the lawyers who subverted justice in Patiala House, the policemen who stood by, the politicians who connived at this, the spokesmen who urged us to ignore institutional vandalism and the demagogues who beat nationalist drums for profit,' writes Mukul Kesavan in The Telegraph, here.

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