A national day is a way to market national unity. Nations are complex things, and it is unsurprising that the obvious reason for the choice hides deeper ones.
On 26 January, India celebrates Republic Day.
At first glance, this is an apt celebration for the day in 1950 on which the Constitution of the new republic came into effect. The real interest is why the day was chosen for this to happen.
A quarter century before, Britain faced issues with former colonies which were now “self-governing”, in the sense that the local white population held sway. Their main gripe was recognition for the swathes of sons dead on the fields of Europe. Britain’s solution created over five years was the “Dominion”, a badge of “free and equal”, a kind of independent-lite prize with bonus membership of a British Commonwealth.
India’s experience in about the same period differed: year one, Britain convenes the all-white Simon Commission; year two, Nehru pere recommends dominion status; year three, Gandhi and Nehru son support the recommendation; year four, Britain acknowledges to Gandhi that talks cannot proceed on the basis of dominion status; and year five, either Gandhi or Nehru son, something still debated, author the declaration of 26 January 1930:
The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually…. Therefore…India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or complete independence.
Dominion status came too little and too late. The Republic was born and in the same year, 1950, Britain, the Dominions and sundry colonies welcomed India’s “free and equal” membership of the newly named club, the “Commonwealth”.
Downunder on 26 January 1788, Captain Phillip founded the colony of New South Wales.
Until about 1935, this was celebrated by NSW, or at least by its lawyers, as Foundation Day. As one legal historian once put it:
As soon as the original settlers had reached the colony, their invisible and inescapable cargo of English law fell from their shoulders and attached itself to the soil on which they stood. Their personal law became the territorial law of the Colony.
This Blackstonian analysis is known to Australia as “terra nullius”, the doctrine that English law arises where land is practically unoccupied. Many indigenous Australians, ie descendants of practitioners of prior occupation, call the day “Invasion Day”.
The other difficulty is that NSW the colony never became Australia. It originally included the land of, eventually spat out, and has some basis for saying its own foundation was the foundation for, the colonies of Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, and South Australia. Western Australia – the only part of Australia to touch the Indian Ocean – is different. It was never part of the colony of New South Wales and its enduring suspicion of its eastern colleagues is reflected in its late acceptance of federation, an acceptance too late to alter the Australian Constitution’s preamble:
WHEREAS the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established…
On 26 January 1808, NSW celebrated its china anniversary with its first and so far only successful military coup, Bligh’s other mutiny.
