Fraternity and the republic

January 28, 2016 14:02

The death of Rohith Vemula raises the question of fraternity in the life of this republic in the starkest possible way. India borrowed France's republican motto - liberty, equality and fraternity - and incorporated it into its Constitution.

Liberty, rooted in individual rights, and equality, defined as equal access to these rights, are ideas that have become part of everyday democratic discourse, but fraternity remains a vague good intention. What can brotherhood mean in political terms? How can it be expressed in policy or legislation? And how is the value of community to be reconciled with the rights-bearing individual citizen, central to modern democracy?

Read Mukul Kesavan's column here

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