By Rajmohan Gandhi. Speaking Tiger. November 2024. Paperback: Rs. 399.
RAJMOHAN Gandhi, one of India’s most illustrious historians, has set himself to the task of unpacking the idea of fraternity in the Indian Constitution and body politic.
The word fraternity, as per the Oxford Dictionary, refers to ‘‘a feeling of friendship and support that exists between the members of a group.’’ In history, before the French Revolution, the sense of fraternity was limited to religious groups, ascriptive identities such as caste groups and the elite noble families who ruled the realm.
After the French Revolution, a new template of the ‘nation’ emerged. The word ‘nation’ emerged in the French as a fraternising political motif of the underclass when the Parisian crowds gathered in front of the Bastille prison demanding the release of their comrades.
The delay of the representatives returning from the Bastille as they sat for lunch with the prison authorities led the crowd to berserk and storm the prison. Later, when the threat of aristocratic retribution loomed, the Third Estate labelled itself as the ‘National Assembly’.
The word ‘national’ was intended to outflank those who did not owe allegiance to the revolutionary cause. When the Napoleonic war raged across Europe, it spread nationalism and republican ideals. Even the Haitian Revolution (slave revolt) invoked the spirit of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’.
