The Ghadar movement holds the clues to unravelling two paradoxes of modern India. First, India remains a constitutional democracy even when authoritarianism is embedded in the architecture of the state. The second paradox is that internationally India is a model for "democratic-development" even though the country has regressed into an abyss of poverty, dispossession, internal strife, ecological precariousness, rising fundamentalisms and militarism since Independence. The Ghadar centenary year is an opportune moment to reflect on the constitutive nature of the rebellion-repression-reform cycles that is formative of the Indian state and Constitution.
