Above the fold: Top stories of the day
1. French President Francois Hollande is at Rajpath as chief guest at the Republic Day Parade. Behind the scenes, the pact to buy Rafale jets from France was signed, but with no deal yet on the price.
2. President Pranab Mukherjee seeks clarifications on the Centre's recommendation for President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh.
3. Actor Anupam Kher, former comptroller and auditor general Vinod Rai and former governor of Jammu and Kashmir Jagmohan are among this year's Padma awardees.
The Big Story: The president's speech
On the eve of the 66th Republic Day, the president spoke of the quality of dissent. "Let us continue to complain, to demand, to rebel," said President Pranab Mukherjee in his address to the nation. He recalled acts of intolerance and warned against the "forces of violence" and "unreason". He reminded his audience of the virtues of dialogue. The president's speech pointed to the fine and complex compact of being a democratic republic. That being national can mean disagreement and not just neat, unquestioning allegiance. That dissent can have regenerative powers.
It is an understanding that has been missing across institutions this past year. The Centre has acquired the habit of dismissing all criticism as "anti-national". When writers returned their Sahitya Akademi awards to protest against the Dadri lynching, the murders of rationalists and other acts of intolerance, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley dismissed their actions as "manufactured dissent" and cast doubt on their motives. NGOs like Greenpeace, which questioned the government's environmental policies, were banned. The Centre raised suspicions that it had been funded by foreign entities to foment insurrections in India.
Regrettably, this attitude spread to the campuses, targeting a weak minority. In IIT Madras, a Dalit student group was accused of "creating hatred atmosphere": they had been agitating about beef bans, ghar wapsi and land and labour reforms. At the University of Hyderabad, a group of Dalit students demonstrating against the Muzaffarnagar riots and the hanging of Yakub Memon was branded "anti-national, extremist and casteist". In cinema halls, people were pulled up for not standing to attention for the national anthem.
But the president's speech should remind audiences of the messiness of being a democracy, which has the power to hold two completely contradictory ideas at the same time. It can mean sitting down, for instance, when everybody else is standing up.
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's big story
Ajoy Bose on how the current government regards dissent.
Ashok Swain on why dissent is critical for India's economic growth.
Politicking and policying
1. Actor Aamir Khan confirms that he never thought of leaving India.
2. Pakistan Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah reportedly killed in a drone strike.
3. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav tells party colleague they should not join politics to make money.
Punditry
1. In the Indian Express, R Balashankar on how the re-election of Amit Shah as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party firms up the party's strategy for 2019.
2. In the Hindu, Sukhadeo Thorat on how discrimination on college campuses persists, in spite of more diverse student populations.
3. In the Telegraph, Brijesh Dayal muses on the deeper ramifications of Pathankot.
Don't Miss...
Mathew John on how we have created a public discourse where it is difficult to address cultural arguments on their own terms:
To start with, it is important to remind ourselves that modern State power is organised to exact absolute authority over all contending nodes of social and cultural power. This of course does not mean an absolute subordination of religious and cultural practices to State power as the Indian Constitution grants religious and personal liberty, implying a degree of autonomy from state interference.
However, as with practices like Jallikattu and exclusion of women form the Ayyappa shrine at Sabarimala, it is only too apparent that it is the State’s exercise of sovereign power that ultimately draws the boundaries of religious and cultural autonomy. Here too there is no reason to believe that the Indian State cannot draw the boundaries of cultural practice in ways that are sensitive to tradition.
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