Tradition is always double-edged — life-affirming for some, ridiculous to others. How modern democracies treat their royalty is as much a test of their modernity as of their sense of humour. So, committed democrats in Madhya Pradesh should take Ms Yashodhara Raje Scindia’s sensitivities about being addressed properly with a humorous pinch of salt. Ms Scindia takes the locally royal status of her clan — “the legacy of the Scindias” — very seriously indeed, and insists on being addressed as shrimant, taking great offence at ‘Mrs’ or ‘Ms’. She is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as a minister in her state. (It is rather ironic, even comical, that she happens to be the state tourism, sports and youth affairs minister — not an office that fits well with archaic values, except perhaps the tourism element.) So the state government has, rather compliantly, issued a notification endorsing her wishes, and some bureaucrats and politicians have made their contrary feelings known about this directive. This is entirely understandable. Elected members of a democratic political system should all be technically equal in their interactions with one another — and that should be the official line, whatever the local variations might be within such a system.

Yet, this little hiccup in state administration reveals the peculiarly muddled nature and origins of the Indian democracy, its curious relationship not only with the country’s colonial past, but also with India’s indigenous traditions of feudal rule and hierarchy. The ‘progress’ from feudal or colonial rule to egalitarianism has not been a simple one in India. Hence, all kinds of feudalism — from the innocuous to the inhuman — exist alongside more ‘modern’ political structures and practices, and are variously endorsed or suppressed by the State. Neither Ms Scindia nor her opponents should take her royalty too seriously, without being downright rude about it. And the State should keep out of the matter altogether.