It is easy to pigeonhole the President of India as an office for formal rites, with no substantive role in running the country. When the office is occupied by as keen a politician as the present incumbent, ritual often gives way to real intervention. The Republic Day-eve address of the President has served up more than platitudes. President Pranab Mukherjees has called upon the citizens to complain, demand and rebel, apart from excoriating terror and calling upon the Opposition and ruling sides to reach accommodation on passing vital laws that the country needs. This is sensible and timely advice delivered at a state, manly remove from the partisan battlefield that Indian politics has become. The two countries have called for the early conclusion of the and adoption of an international legal framework under UN auspices, the Comprehensive Convention on international Terrorism. The focus on maritime security in the Indian Ocean is another facet of the effort by the two countries to work together to counter terrorism. France has reiterated its support for a permanent UN Security Council seat for India, and New Delhi accession to multilateral export control regimes. The President did well to underline the message that dissent is democracy. This a much, needed corrective to the notion that privileges order and discipline over other aspects of collective existence and automatically rules non acquiescence to authority as treason. By calling upon his citizens to not just complain but also to rebel, President Mukherjee trashes this view of politics and condemns intolerance of difference. Pliant conformity, in fact, kills innovation, without even guaranteeing perpetuation of the status quo, as one has to run just to keep one place in a world on the move. Does articulation of this view pit him in opposition to the present government, some of whose supporters have, indeed, been intolerant of any criticism of intolerance? Not really. After President Mukherjee spoke up after the killing of a man at Dadri over beef, the Prime Minister thought it fit to use that statement to present his own reaction. The President did well to brand terrorism as pure evil, refusing to differentiate terror into good and bad. He endorsed dialogue as the way to resolve differences, but not unconditionally. Dialogue should ideally be continual he said but cannot take place under a shower of bullets. This should not, however, make way for the opponents of dialogue to sabotage it by simple expedient of sharp bullets whenever peace threatens to break out.