This Republic Day was as never before. On that, all sides will cohere. The challenge is with encountering this episode with the Republic's deepest sense of its self-awareness. Depending on where you stand, you could see it as vandalisation besmirching a solemn day, a day when the people of India adopted a Constitution - a national monument really - or as its fulfilment. The violence was not part of the script, any which way you look at it. Angry, riotous mobs broke through Delhi police cordons to reach the iconic ramparts of the Red Fort, where a lone figure hoisted the Nishan Saheb, near the Tricolour. Outside of the momentary significance of the act, we could wonder if it has any place there. If it was an erroneous deployment of the Nishan Saheb itself. The violence and pitched battles witnessed on the streets of the national capital as protesting farmers poured in across the borders, breaking the barricades with their tractors, put paid to the peaceful nature of the farmers protests. It's a collective gap that remains for us to fill. The usual R-Day pageantry may be inadequate, but should it be replaced with violence? And who is at fault? Questions assault us as we receive the news of a young man dying. On this day, it is ironical that the state is at loggerheads with a section of its own population. For the farmers, who earned kudos for holding peaceful protests for two months, it may have been a day where they courted a disaster bigger than what they wanted changed. Farmer leaders have not covered themselves in glory. But yes, the state machinery could have chosen to act non-confrontationally. It is perhaps time for governments to recalibrate their roles, and be true to the meaning of representative democracy. Lawmaking here cannot be top down, with the elected government arrogating the rights to itself. There's no shortcut to consensus-building.