As a helicopter pilot in Britain’s Royal Air Force and his wealthy entrepreneur fiancé exchanged wedding vows in a 945-year-old shrine in front of a global audience of two billion on Friday morning, Indians may have been amused by the affection for royalty in a country where parliamentary democracy was born. While India’s own feudals and remnants of the many Maharajahs and Nawabs must have felt nostalgic about the Raj, watching the royal wedding in London, most Indian taxpayers would have been relieved to know that they do not have to foot the bill for such a royal do. No Indian President or Prime Minister has yet hosted such a wedding party in their official residence!
Judging by the energetic debate in Britain’s mainstream media around the Will-Kat union, there’s a bigger reason for pride — and some irony. When India became independent in 1947, it opted for the Westminster form of parliamentary democracy with an elected executive and bicameral legislature. Then in January 26, 1950 India adopted a Constitution and opted to become a Republic. It stayed within the Commonwealth, but without owing fealty to the British monarch unlike many other former colonies. India would have, instead, a President as head of state, who would exercise powers mostly via the council of ministers. Today, this is broadly the system that many commentators are suggesting for Britain in place of a monarchy that plays no meaningful role in public life, unproductively absorbs public money and represents much that is out of synch with modern life. Critics even point to the dwindling revenues that accrue from overseas tourists who come to gawp at Buckingham Palace and other trappings of royalty. But the global viewership for the royal wedding would hopefully improve tourism into the UK.
Republicanism isn’t new to Britain; the country had a taste of it in the mid-seventeenth century under Oliver Cromwell, and his austere Khomeini-type rule persuaded Parliament of the merits of a monarchy strictly under its control. This is pretty much how it has panned out in Britain, saving the country from a succession of dissolute, certifiably insane and ineffectual monarchs who ascended the throne during the island’s surge to world domination. British historians point out that Britain as a constitutional monarchy was able to avoid the fate of France in the late eighteenth century and Germany, Austria and Russia after World War I. True, but monarchy-less Germany and France now have larger economies larger than the UK. Many who argue that Britain’s monarchy is a harmless institution are also wrong. Its succession is governed by an Act of Settlement that allows only a white, protestant, male heir to succeed (a female heir is permitted only when there are no other male contenders), a world away from Britain's multicultural society. No surprise, a poll showed only 20 per cent of Britons had a “strong interest” in the royal wedding. India's constitution, by contrast, was ahead of its time. There is no colour, caste, gender or religious bar to president-ship — and Rashtrapati Bhavan has seen a fairly wide representation — and the candidate must be elected by both houses of Parliament and state legislatures. The tragedy is that political leaders of every hue have subverted the Presidential role to such an extent that incumbents of the former Viceregal palace are viewed with the same scepticism as the British monarch.