Times of India author Mrutyuanjai Mishra, in a May 1 op-ed, provides a valuable reflection on the recent, highly symbolic visit of Britain’s King Charles III to the United States—and that, in particular, from a formerly colonized nation of the Global South. He writes:
“The 250th anniversary of American independence should have been a moment of clarity, a reaffirmation of the principles that gave birth to a republic. Instead, it has revealed a profound contradiction at the heart of contemporary political life. At a time marked by war, economic strain, and institutional breakdown, Donald Trump chose to celebrate not the rejection of monarchy, but its legacy.”
Mishra goes on to depict the principled difference between the view held by America’s Founding Fathers and the British Empire’s leading thinkers: “The American Revolution constituted a decisive rupture with monarchy and imperial rule. It was not an extension of British political culture but a rejection of it. The Declaration of Independence established that sovereignty resides with the people, not with a crown or inherited authority. This position diverged sharply from European traditions shaped by thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, whose frameworks, despite their differences, remained tied to hierarchies of power and property. The American founders advanced a more radical proposition: that human beings possess inherent dignity, rational capacity, and the ability to pursue the common good. Government, in this view, exists to cultivate these qualities rather than restrain them under the authority of a sovereign ruler. To celebrate monarchy at the symbolic center of American governance is therefore to invert the very principle upon which the republic was founded.”
