By Inderjit Badhwar
Republic Day is meant to be a moment of national self-congratulation—and of self-examination. Every January 26, we rehearse the story of constitutional triumph: a republic born of law, dignity, and equal citizenship. This year’s 77th Republic Day offered no shortage of pageantry or pride. The presence of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa as chief guests was widely—and rightly—celebrated as a marker of India’s rising stature in a world unsettled by superpower decline and ethical drift. It signalled a realignment of “middle powers”, a new grammar of cooperation in a fractured global order.
Yet, as Prof Upendra Baxi argues in our cover story this week, Republic Day cannot be read only through the lens of diplomacy, optics, and economic partnership. It must also be read through the lived experience of citizens for whom the Constitution remains a promise deferred—sometimes cruelly, sometimes endlessly.
The second “gift” of this Republic Day, Prof Baxi tells us, arrived not on Rajpath but in Courtroom No 1 of the Supreme Court. It came in the form of judicial anguish: Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s intervention in the case of Shaheen Malik, an acid attack survivor who spent 16 years pursuing justice, only to see the principal accused acquitted. Her story is not merely tragic; it is indicting. It exposes the distance between constitutional ideals and institutional delivery, between legal text and lived reality.
This juxtaposition—global triumph on the one hand, intimate injustice on the other—is what gives this essay its unsettling power. Prof Baxi does not ask us to choose between celebration and critique. He insists that a mature republic must hold both truths together.
The Indian state has not been indifferent to acid violence. Laws exist. Sections have been renumbered, renamed, and stiffened. The Supreme Court has issued path-breaking directions—banning over-the-counter acid sales, mandating compensation, regulating licenses, and demanding accountability from states. Yet, as the data before the Court grimly shows, hundreds of cases remain pending across High Courts. Worse still is what criminologists call the “dark figure of crime”—the unknown, unreported, and uncounted suffering that never enters official records.
What Prof Baxi forces us to confront is the uncomfortable reality that law, by itself, does not guarantee justice. Delay becomes denial. Procedure becomes punishment. Survivors are worn down not by the violence alone, but by the institutions meant to heal them.
The essay is also significant for the questions it dares to raise. Should acid attacks be treated with the same seriousness as dowry deaths, with a reversal of the burden of proof? Should deterrence, rather than reform, guide punishment in such cases? Should the property of convicted offenders be attached to fund survivor rehabilitation? These are not merely legal proposals; they are moral provocations.
Equally important is Prof Baxi’s insistence that acid violence cannot be seen in isolation. It belongs to a continuum of gendered cruelty—linked to rape culture, femicide, and the everyday normalization of violence against women. In this framing, acid attacks are not aberrations. They are symptoms.
The essay also acknowledges what the state often forgets to recognise: the quiet, relentless work of civil society. From survivor-led initiatives to organisations offering shelter, legal aid, and dignity, these efforts remain islands of care in a sea of institutional neglect. Their existence is inspiring. Their marginality is damning.
Perhaps the most powerful moment in this piece is its conclusion. Prof Baxi calls upon India’s 75-plus-year-old Constitution to launch a time-bound, suo motu struggle against acid violence as a violation of human rights. He invokes Justice Krishna Iyer’s unforgettable warning against courts becoming mere “shopkeepers of justice” rather than its missionaries.
That challenge is not addressed to judges alone. It is addressed to all of us—lawmakers, administrators, media, and citizens—who take pride in constitutionalism while tolerating its selective application.
This is why this essay matters now. At a moment when India is confidently claiming its place in the world, it asks a harder question: what does global leadership mean if the republic fails its most scarred and silenced citizens?
Republic Day, Prof Baxi reminds us, is not only about what the Constitution has achieved. It is about what it still demands of us.
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