A Republic in conversation

I was honoured to be the chief guest at this year’s Republic Day celebrations in my residential community. Speaking to neighbours, families, and children on that morning prompted a deceptively simple question: What is India? Is India land? Or is it a feeling? Is it memory and story, sacrifice and identity? History? Or language? Is India its gods? It is all of that. And it is its people.

India, as a Republic, is best understood as a conversation across generations. Even within many Indian families, different conversational strands coexist. There are those who questioned society through ideas and words, and those who built, administered, and maintained the everyday machinery that allowed society to function. Reformers and practitioners. Thinkers and doers.

In my family, that duality was visible. On one side were writers and social reformers who believed that reason and questioning were essential to progress. My great-grandfather, Tripuraneni Ramaswamy, wrote poetry when India was not free. His words were not decorative. They were meant to instil resolve. In one poem, he wrote that a young person who has girded himself never turns back, and one who has given his word never runs away. These lines predate the Constitution, yet speak the same ethical language of responsibility and commitment.

Writing before and after independence, my grandfather, Tripuraneni Gopichand, spoke about those without a voice, social misfits, and the economically left behind. He questioned, through his characters and psychoanalytical narratives, what is it that constitutes progress and inclusion. On the other side of my family were engineers, family-trained civil contractors, and administrators who collected taxes and kept accounts. Their contribution was quieter and less visible, but no less important. They built roads, houses, canals, and institutions that outlasted them. Together, these strands reflect an essential aspect of India. The Republic has been shaped as much by those who asked uncomfortable questions as by those who ensured daily life did not collapse.

Religion, borders, migration, ancestry, and tribes together complicate the idea of India in productive ways. India is one of the few societies where almost every major religion has lived side by side for centuries, making faith a source of meaning and moral order as well as contestation. The Republic neither erased religion nor elevated one above the other, choosing instead a demanding balance between freedom of belief and the primacy of citizenship, a balance that requires constant restraint and renewal.

India’s political borders, shaped by colonial administration and the trauma of Partition, sit uneasily against far older civilisational flows in which languages, cuisines, customs, pilgrimages, and kinship networks crossed frontiers with ease. Migration has been a constant, long preceding passports and visas, and remains a powerful driver of economic and social change. Even contemporary debates on ancestry and genetics, framed through ANI and ASI populations, point not to purity but to repeated migrations and admixtures, reminding us that India was shaped by encounter and assimilation rather than a single origin story. Tribal communities deepen this understanding, many predating classical civilisations and carrying distinct relationships with land, language, and belief. Independent India’s journey shows how these complexities have been managed, sometimes well and sometimes imperfectly.

It is worth renewing the Republic’s conversation in practical ways – mentoring a teenager, building local capability through startups and skills, or amplifying voices otherwise unheard. Citizenship, after all, is where belonging meets duty.

For many Indians, belonging has always been layered. My country is where my tribe is, and my country is also where my duty calls. India has endured because it has made space for both: rootedness and obligation, identity and responsibility, belonging and service. India is a plurality, undefined. Let us keep it that way.

The writer is the former CTO of Tata Group and founder of AI company Myelin Foundry is driven to peel off known facts to discover unknown layers.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.