India is a constitutional republic. It is a form of government that is based on certain unamendable principles enshrined in the constitution and derives its authority from the people of India, not any hereditary sovereign. The word republic comes from the Latin res publica, which is a translation of the Greek politeia. The Roman Republic had a mixed constitution, consisting of elements of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, had also recommended a mixed constitution or polity as the best practicable state.
India had an older republican tradition. The Vedic people had local associations (goshthi) that were represented in powerful councils (sabha and samiti) that controlled the kings. In the time of the Buddha, there were republics or ganarajya across the present India-Nepal boundary. Vriji was a confederation of Kshatriya tribes. Malla was another important republican confederation. Koliya and Shakya were also republics. The Buddhist sangha was also organised according to republican principles. Buddhist texts, Panini and Kautilya confirm the existence of these republics. The Panchatantra, in its allegorical style, compares a ganarajya to a herd of animals or a flock of birds and a kingdom or samrajya to a lion and its retinue of scavengers. The rise of great kingdoms like Kosala and Magadha eclipsed the independence of the republics. Moreover, the revered political thinker, Kautilya, preferred a monarchical form of government because it provided a united and strong authority against foreign invasions. The ambition of great kings was to establish a Chakravarti Samrajya or hegemony on the land between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, known as Bharatavarsha.
The modern republican tradition draws its inspiration from the American and French Revolutions. On 4 July 1776, the representatives of 13 colonies severed their allegiance to the British King George III and founded the United States of America, a constitutional republic. It adopted the oldest written constitution of the world in 1789. The same year, the elected representatives of the Third Estate (commons) formed the National Assembly of France, which was joined by a majority of the clergy and a handful of nobles. In 1791, they adopted a written constitution, establishing a constitutional monarchy. But the revolutionaries did not trust King Louis XVI, and he was deposed and executed. The French First Republic was inaugurated in 1792. The American and French Republics adopted a democratic basis of government.
India was ruled by the British colonial government until 15 August 1947 and remained a dominion of the British Commonwealth until 26 January 1950, when the Republic of India was established. Besides the direct rule of the colonial government, India also had about 565 princely states, subordinate to the British Crown. Most of them were integrated into India by the efforts of the Home Minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. In a way, the British Raj was a Chakravarti Samrajya, uniting the land between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean. Indeed, the British Crown held the title of Empress or Emperor of India from 1876 to 1948. Hence, the establishment of a constitutional republic was a novel development in the Indian political system. The influence of other republics like the United States, France and Ireland is quite evident in our constitution. Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, who drafted the Indian constitution, was also an admirer of the ancient Indian republics and the Buddhist sangha system. Perhaps, in the last 70 years, the deepening of the republican tradition in India has been because of the imprint of goshthi, sabha, samiti and ganarajya on people’s consciousness.
The former kings and their descendants have also adjusted to the republican system. Till 1971, they had permission to keep their royal titles and got monetary compensation (Privy Purse) from the government. Mrs. Indira Gandhi abolished their privileges as a part of her populist socialist agenda. Indeed, she went on to discard democratic principles and imposed an emergency in 1975. However, the people of India had incorporated the democratic spirit and so defeated her in the 1977 elections. The Republic of India is democratic and secular in nature, like some Western countries and unlike one-party authoritarian or theocratic republics. The former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran have ‘republic’ in their names, which indicates the anti-monarchist origins of these states and not true democratic participation of the people. The republican tradition in India is not based on hatred against kings. In fact, some royal descendants have participated in the democratic process and become important political leaders of India. They also have an important role in the religious and cultural tradition of the country, e.g. in the management of temples. Thus, India has a strong republican tradition, which is democratic and secular in nature and has constructive participation of former royal families.
Published as “The
Republican Tradition in India”, Mayank Goel (co-author), The Criminal
and Constitutional Law Blog, 28 July 2020: https://tcclb.wordpress.com/2020/07/28/the-republican-tradition-in-india/
