User blog comment:Voxelplox/A few ideas/@comment-11343076-20140924124750/@comment-3112181-20141002021000

India is most definitely a republic. It's official name is "the Republic of India".

Technically a democracy does define a form of government, just like a republic. However a democracy, by definition, is a government in which literally every single citizen has equal powers and roles in the government ("democracy" comes from the Greek "demo", meaning people, and "cracy", meaning government"). However, since a true democracy is impractical given modenr populations, that's why the republic – or an indirect democracy – is the popular choice. The terms "federal", etc apply to a whole different concept.

Nevertheless I agree that Gavin's comment makes little to no sense.