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.
