NEW DELHI - India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru designed the Republic Day parade to be a national festival when citizens would come out on streets and join spontaneously to celebrate the dreams of the young nation. Under his daughter Indira Gandhi, the parade became an imperial display of military prowess modelled after the grand march of Roman cavalry.

Ever since, the decline of Republic Day parades has been steady, and festivities have become a crude caricature of the "bread and circus" theory of absolute rulers. Billions of dollars of military hardware are paraded in a country where half the population lives below the poverty line.

This year's parade was even more incongruous. Media reports said New Delhi resembled a cantonment. For once, India's cable channels were using the language of restraint and understatement. The city was virtually under siege with barricades every few meters, frisking at every point, and sharp-shooters looking menacing from every balcony in the neighbourhood.

When I called a Dilliwala for an appointment in the afternoon after the parade, her answer was that she was not going to step out of her home as long as the Republic Day tamasha wasn't over. That is what it has come down to: a tamasha.

After the suicide attacks on the Indian parliament on 13 December, the security threat is indeed real. But there never is a foolproof security system, and going to the extremes creates unnecessary inconvenience for the general population. The air space over New Delhi was closed for nearly four hours, public transport in the city came to a halt, and life had come to a complete standstill. If this was Republic Day, what kind of a republic was the government celebrating-a Republic of Paranoia?

Security personnel were so edgy that they confiscated even pens from us as we entered the viewing stands. At the second check-point, they looked at my Nepali topi-my attempt at jest that the space inside was empty earned me the kind of nasty look that only Hariyanvis seem capable of giving. Then they waved me in.
The viewing stands for guests were half-empty. Space especially reserved for children remained unoccupied. The only children to be seen were the ones in the cultural troupes that performed for the president of India and his guest this year, the president of Mauritius. Two years ago, the guest was the late King Birendra.
Despite the militarisation of the parade, one has to admit that this is a spectacular pageant. But you have to wonder what kind of people get turned on by such a glaring display of military might.

The so-called cultural troupes that traipsed past the viewstand were troubling. Invariably, they were centred around jingoistic themes of "bravery, patriotism and sacrifice". There were no calls for peace, tolerance and harmony. Fifty-three years after its independence, how does such a martial spectacle sit with a nation that still regards Mahatma Gandhi as a national icon? Had he been alive, the Mahatma would have gone on a satyagraha to stop this public glorification of violence on a day that celebrates the creation of a new republic. Even Nehru would have been uneasy. His vision of India was of dams, highways and railroads-monuments to development.

But then the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party had nothing to do with either the Independence struggle or with the framing of India's republican constitution. In fact it is a party that is rumoured to have certain sympathies for Gandhi's assassin, Nathu Ram Godse.

The tableaux were kitschy, and the most bizarre was India's Agni missile. This was war-mongering on a grand scale: all designed to play to the voters in the Uttar Pradesh and Punjab assembly elections.

The swagger hides a deep-seated insecurity. It does not show a country that is confident, generous and magnanimous about its own stature. In a rousing speech that rang with truth, president KR Narayanan agonised that women were not safe "even in their mothers wombs", that dalits continued to be discriminated against. But the official publication of the Government of India continued to claim that "victory, the symbol of supremacy, is synonymous with India's history." Victory over whom, for whom? Isn't the real threat to India's security its own poverty?

As a Nepali, these shouldn't have been my concerns. Besides, many of India's development challenges are also ours-on a smaller scale. But I couldn't fail to notice that even though there was no contingent of Gurkhas parading down Rajpath this year, there were three Nepali surnames-a Thapa, a Ghale and a Pun-leading paramilitary battalions. The Gurkhas were probably at the Line of Control, facing Pakistani guns. I couldn't help reflecting that they are protecting our neighbour from another neighbour, while our own country is battling an insurgency.

Like it or not, our fate is intertwined with the fate of our neighbours down south. If India moves ahead, we will be pulled along. If India stagnates, we stagnate. India-locked, Nepal's challenges are too big for our own limited resources. So, as the helicopters showered rose petals on military armour, I made a silent prayer that India gets on with it.