The importance of being President

I’m writing this article because a) I feel quite strongly about it, b) it has been largely ignored in the foreign press.

Protocol in India is a hidebound affair, I would imagine the current system possibly has its origins in the Mughal courts, but it was the British who codified it to the extreme : designating the number of bows, whether one could sit or stand, who took order of precedence, what adornments were allowed. There are whole volumes dedicated to the subject, which I will happily continue to avoid.

The Indian state inherited a lot of this barely updated pageantry and continues to enforce these rules at every level of government. At the top of the protocol list, replacing the king is the President, the nominated monarch of the republic. This brings us to the slightly delayed point of the article, our current President. Droupadi Murmu.

Wikipedia will list her myriad achievements and milestone accomplishments, they speak for themselves. This isn’t about that (not to dismiss them, they’re just superfluous to the point I am trying to make). It is about the optics. A tribal woman is nominated the Queen. Protocol demands that every citizen gives her precedence over all others. In a country with a preference for fair skin above all else, for European features in their actresses, a tribal woman can never win a beauty contest. But she can far surpass it. She is the projected face of the country at foreign events, at international forums. It gives me great pride and joy to see her representing us everywhere, at royal events, at the Pope’s funeral.

How better to upturn the social pyramid by placing the most marginalised sections of society at the very top. To have everyone salute them, make way for them, sit after them. From Abdul Kalam to Ram Nath Kovind to President Murmu the BJP plays this optics game well. The optics are important though, as an (English) Chief Justice once said “Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done”. This is social justice, it needs to be seen. The whip of protocol designed to reinforce class and caste distinctions has been turned against its original purpose, lashing out at our notions of hierarchy.

No other country has done this so often. Where has a person from a marginalised community, which the majority does not identify with, become a head of state? The Catholic Church which preaches equality of men? The Soviet or Communist states which pretend the same? The USA, whose constitution declares ‘all men are created equal’ comes closest with Obama, (optics again, his ancestry is not black American). The Nobel committee was so taken with it that they promptly handed him a peace prize for it in the midst of trigger-happy drone strikes across Afghanistan.

The traditional liberal way of fighting social injustice is to write columns and opinion pieces from ivory towers. More idealistic and dynamic activists  crowd march in urban areas disrupting traffic. They might have the best intentions in the world but it has the unintended consequence of crystallising the image of tribals as victims of exploitation and depredation. I would argue that the performative virtue signalling doesn’t hold a candle to the optics of the Prime Minister bowing to President Murmu.