For many, the best part of the Republic Day celebrations is Beating Retreat (to which many people often mistakenly include ‘the’ in between), a ceremony held three days after the parade. It is unbelievably beautiful, held at sunset at Vijay Chowk in New Delhi with the camels of the Border Security Force silhouetted against the setting sun on the ramparts of the Central Secretariat. Just where India got that idea from was highlighted at Windsor Castle on Wednesday.

As part of the pomp and pageantry laid on for the visiting US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania, King Charles III and Queen Camilla treated him to Beating Retreat on the verdant East Lawns of Windsor Castle at sunset. It was obviously part of the not-so-subtle British strategy of “shock and awe" to bedazzle the unpredictable American into a state of pleasant stupor, and no one does military ceremonial splendour better than the British even today.

Indians, at least of a certain age, would get a distinct feeling of déjà vu watching what the British dished out for the Americans. On a blindingly verdant grassy expanse, massed bands of Britain’s armed forces playing a variety of martial musical instruments marched in intricate formations, in front of an appreciative audience.

It looked very much like the ceremony in India every January 29th though the Indian sunset is qualitatively different from a British one!

The pipes and drums were especially evocative, although the music chosen was very different from those in India. But the rows of British flautists, drummers........

© News18