Ganarajya or ganatantra? Our passport and the Indian Constitution name our republic as ganarajya. But our Republic Day is officially called Ganatantra Divas. A small discrepancy, you might think. Perhaps an oversight. Or, maybe a nuance. That is what my publisher thought, when I pressed him to change the title of my recent book from the proposed Ganatantra ka Swadharm to Ganarajya ka Swadharm.

This seemingly minor difference invites us to search deeper. These two terms allow us to distinguish between two different concepts for which the English language has just one word — “republic”. Once we extricate the concept of ganarajya from the more familiar and dominant concept of ganatantra, it opens the way to recovering the lost meanings embedded deep in the idea of a ganarajya. This recovery, in turn, sets us on a path to face the political challenge of our times.

I am not suggesting that one of the two usages is wrong. Unlike these days, the makers of our Constitution and the early guardians of our republic were very careful with their words. They must have had good reasons to call it “Ganatantra Diwas” and not “Ganarajya Diwas”. I am not saying that one of these words is more authentic. Sanskrit scholars tell us that both these words are pretty recent, 19th- or 20th-century, coinages. The “republics” in ancient India were called “gana” or “sangha”, not “ganarajya” or “ganatantra”. Nor do I claim a direct........

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