To be republican is to be part of an honourable fraternity and an old one. Not as old as the word itself, whose meaning altered over the centuries: of the first systems to which it was applied, the Greek polis or city-state remains historically unique while the Roman republic was, properly speaking, an oligarchy. It is to the Enlightenment that we owe the republican ideal in its modern sense: by the time of its full flowering, in 19th-century Europe, to be republican was to be on the side of representative democracy (with suitable property qualifications to be sure) against arbitrary despotism; worked-out and voted-upon constitutional arrangements rather than custom; and civic union as opposed to arbitrary boundaries defended by autocratic rulers. Above all, republicanism signified political radicalism, even though its actual programme might range from institutional reform to outright revolution.
Almost by definition, republicanism implies new laws and administrative arrangements – republics endure when their basis is firm. The legal and administrative reforms enacted during the French Revolution, and systematised by Napoleon Bonaparte, whose name they bore, were exported to Europe by example and conquest: the 'Code Napoleon' outlasted the Bourbon restoration and the Orleanist monarchy to serve as the founding text for the legal codes of any number of countries. However in India's case, the foundations were hollow from the very beginning. None of its founding fathers thought of themselves as republican, if their acts and legacies are anything to go by. B R Ambedkar is the sole exception, probably because his origins insulated him from that false pride in an ancient civilisation, which acted like a drug on the rest of his contemporaries. These, almost to a man or woman, were upper and middle caste, as well as class, in origin. This meant that they were, on the whole, comfortable with the Subcontinent's complex systems of hierarchy, even while (often sincerely) deploring them. It was this ingrained conservatism that shielded, for example, those decorative, entirely parasitic rulers of 'princely' states, so thoroughly emasculated by the British that they represented no military threat at all, by giving them a gilt-edged retirement plan rather than the outright expropriation they deserved.
A troubled beginning
The failure of the Constituent Assembly to contemplate thoroughgoing administrative and legal reform revealed most clearly the limits of the founders' ambitions and fears. Modernisation was to be achieved without radically upsetting the traditional social order and its hierarchies, and the underpaid, socially subordinated reservoir of labour that formed its base. A few of them hoped otherwise but what they did, and failed to do, guaranteed that the wider consensus would prevail. Jawaharlal Nehru's easy acceptance of the institutions of the colonial state, his belief that they could be made to serve a sovereign republic as readily as they had served colonialism, was shared by his socialist colleagues such as Jayaprakash Narayan: for them, the sphere of politics and economics was divorced from any consideration of the state's intrinsic character. There was a great deal of unconscious aristocraticism in this outlook. Its consequences were stark. The lack of institutional reform meant that the structures of political democracy were grafted to the coercive apparatus of the colonial state. This suited the inclinations of the governing elite, who saw the poor as rabble to be controlled and put to work in suitable ways. Between the quinquennial expressions of popular will (which could be managed in various ways), it made increasing use of the extensive coercive powers it had arrogated to itself with the tacit concurrence of a growing middle class.
A sense of crisis developed quickly. The fashionable nostalgia for the Nehru years amongst a section of the intelligentsia is nostalgia for a fictitious past. By the end of the first decade of independence, there was a palpable sense of unease. This was partly because competing views of economic strategy were still being fought out, and the stated aims of the republic continued to agitate its best minds. Whatever else India was or was not doing, poverty remained endemic, not enough food was being grown, the pace of industrialisation was sluggish and so on. This unease soon slipped over into crisis. By the 1970s, the viability of the country's political system seemed under threat. That it did not succumb was due to the political farsightedness of its founders: federalism (which formalised regional control by regional elites), and linguistic re-organisation, not to mention the reservations system, served it well. Capitalism, partly directed by the state, and based on characteristically wasteful expropriation of natural resources and savage exploitation of labour in agriculture and the unorganised sector, tied regional elites together and nourished a growing middle class. The development of indigenous capitalism up to and beyond 1991 (when it felt strong enough to begin dismantling the regulatory structures that had originally nourished, and later inhibited, it) leads directly to the triumphalism of today, when the only question appears to be how far and fast India will rise in the global pecking order.