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Why India Is A Nation

Introduction

One of the oft-repeated urban myths that sometimes pops-up in conversationeven among many educated, well meaning Indians is that India as a nation is aBritish creation. The argument goes roughly as follows India is an artificialentity. There are only a few periods in history when it was unified under thesame political entity. It was only the British that created the idea of India as asingle nation and unified it into a political state. A related assumption, in ourminds, is that the developed Western countries have a comparatively fargreater continuity of nationhood, and legitimacy as states, than India.

This urban myth is not accidental. It was deliberately taught in the Britishestablished system of education. John Strachey, writing in `India: ItsAdministration and Progress in 1888, said This is the first and most essentialthing to remember about India that there is not and never was an India,possessing any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious; no Indiannation.

To teach this self-serving colonial narrative obviously suited the British policyof divide and rule. That it still inanely survives means that it is worth setting torest.

In this essay, we establish that Stracheys colonial narrative is demonstrablyfalse. Not only is India a coherent nation but, in fact, there are few countries onthe planet that are more legitimate nation-states than India. That some of usdont see this clearly only reflects how we have accepted the colonial myths aswell as failed to study the history of the rest of the world.

The Modern States and Their Origins

The concept of nation-states, i.e. that the aspirations of the people thatconstitute a nation are best served by a common political entity is considered arelatively recent idea in Europe from the 18th century. Nationalism led to theformation of nation-states and modern countries. This development was

Why India Is A Na on sankrant.org Readability h p://www.readability.com/ar cles/jtyc5pen

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followed up with a gradual hardening of state boundaries with the passportand visa regime that followed it.

Note that the concept of nationhood is based on the idea shared by a set ofpeople that they constitute a nation. This idea or feeling may be based oncommon ties of a people based on their culture, common descent, language,religion or other such attributes. The state constitutes a group of peopleinhabiting a specific territory and living according to a common legal andpolitical authority.

The modern nation-state, as it exists today, is a new development for theentire world, and not just for India. Mediaeval Europe, for instance, wasdivided politically into many small principalities, the boundaries andsovereignties of which changed frequently[2]. Many of the countries as weknow them today got established in the 19th and 20th century, and theboundaries of these changed throughout the 20th century in the two WorldWars, border disputes and the turmoil in Eastern Europe.

The United Kingdom was not really united till the act of Union in 1702 whenEngland (including Wales) and Scotland came together. Even then theyretained different laws and (even more crucially in European nationhood)retained separate national Churches. In 1801, the United Kingdom of GreatBritain and Ireland was formed. In 1922, Ireland broke off as an independentcountry resulting in the present political formation the United Kingdom ofGreat Britain and Northern Ireland. Thus the UK in its present political state,if that is the criteria to be used, is not even a hundred years old.

Across the Atlantic, the picture is even more stark. In 1700, the British colonieswere spread barely over the area that comprises the few North Eastern States,less than 10% of the current geographical areas. The diverse Native Americantribes that inhabited the area of the present day United States could not besaid to have comprised a nation, and even if they did, the current United Statesneither considers itself as a continuity of the native culture, nor are its peopleprimarily descendents of the natives. Even in 1776, when America declareditself a separate state from the British, its area was a small fraction of the areait has today, mainly constituting the states on the East Coast. Only in 1845 didTexas and California, among its largest states, become part of it as a result of awar with Mexico. Washington State gained statehood in 1889, Hawaii in 1900.Thus the United States in its present political and geographic conception isbarely 100 years old as a state and, at the maximum limit, as a political entityis about 250 years, with many annexations and a civil war in between. No state


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or kingdom existed on its boundaries before that in history.

If you take Mexico, the story is better, but not much. While it has greatercontinuity from pre-colonial times than the United States because of the AztecEmpire that existed for about a hundred years before the Spanish Conquest,the Aztec never controlled all of present day Mexico. No other conception ofnation-hood, such as shared religious beliefs, united the other areas of Mexicowith the Aztec ones. Furthermore, while present day Mexicans take pride intheir Aztec heritage and use symbols from the Aztec nation on their flag, theyhave largely lost any direct cultural continuity of either language or religiousbeliefs from pre-colonial times. Spanish has very nearly wiped out the nativelanguages and 95% of Mexicans are now Christians and described as`Hispanic. i.e. of the Spanish culture.

Similarly, Africa and South America mostly constitute of state boundariescarved up by colonial rule. The present boundaries of the African states werelargely carved out by treaties among the European nations between 1884 and1899 in meetings held in Europe with no African representation into theprocess! While there had been some kingdoms like Ghana and Mali in earliertimes that were politically united, the boundaries of current African countriesrarely map to the territories of historical kingdoms.

In short, if we take the legitimacy of current nation-states on the basis ofcenturies of common continuous political rule over the same geographicalboundary and inhabited by the same people, then practically no country on theplanet meets this criteria. Simply put, shifting nature of political kingdoms andtheir boundaries over the centuries legitimize virtually no country in its presentform.

To understand nationhood then as it is supports the modern nation-state, wethus must search the roots of nationhood first and foremost in the conceptionof nationhood, i.e. did a particular set of people, within a particular geography,imagine of themselves a common socio-cultural geographical heritage thatcomprised them as a nation?

Understanding Indian NationhoodGeography

The first element of Indian nationhood draws from its unique geography. Indiais one of the few countries that can be located on a physical map of the world,even when no political boundaries are drawn. It is worth taking a deep breath


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and looking at the map below, reflecting on the significance of this geographybefore we go further.

Fig 1: Indias geographical unity

The Indian peninsula and vast plains are bounded by the ocean on three sidesand the land stretches to the highest peaks of the Himalayas in the north. Thevast sweep of the land ends in the East with the mountainous border withBurma. In the West, just past the Indus, the mountains come downwardstowards the ocean again forming a natural boundary.

Early civilizations all developed on the banks of great river systems Egypt onthe Nile, Mesopotamia on the Tigris and Euphrates, the Chinese on theYangste Kiang. Thus civilization developed on the great river systems of theIndus and the Gangetic plain one of the richest river-soil-climate systems inthe world; and on the Narmada and Cauvery. And because of the ease of accessin this land throughout the ages, there was an enormous interchange ofthought and ideas, people and customs, and there developed a culture that isdistinctly Indian, and at the same time incredibly diverse.

The cultures distinctive nature evolved precisely because the unique geographyfacilitated it. The large mountains and bodies of water separated it fromsurrounding cultures to give it its distinctiveness. The low barriers tomovement within this land mass ensured an ease of access to build a coherentwhole. This ensured that the exchanges that took place within this largeseparated petri dish were much deeper and longer lasting than those that tookplace with those from without. Hence was created a unique and diversecivilization.


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Political Unity

Among the earliest political consolidations, even by the dates of presentcolonial scholarship, was under the Mauryas from the 6th century BC to the3rd century BC, when most of India was under their rule.

After the Mauryas, there was repeated political consolidation of large parts ofIndia, even when all of it was not under a single rule. The Kanishkasconsolidated the north from the Hindu Kush Mountains to Bihar and south toGujarat and Central India. The Satavahana Empire, considered to be foundedby high officials of the Mauryas, consolidated the south and central parts.

The Gupta Empire again politically consolidated the area from Afghanistan toAssam and south to the Narmada, possibly exerting political control evenfurther down south. Samudragupta led an expedition all the way down toKanchipuram in present Tamil Nadu. While the southern areas were notformally part of the Empire, they were quite likely de-facto vassal states, payingtribute to the Emperor. The only other major comparable empires in the worldof this size at the time were the Chinese and the Roman.

Note that it would be a thousand years after the Mauryan Empire wasestablished and even much after the Gupta Empire that the Anglo-Saxons inthe 5th century AD would first move into the region that would later be calledEngland. It would be nearly five hundred more years before the territory ofEngland would be consolidated as an independent political entity. Only muchlater would there be attempts at unity of `Great Britain. The `UnitedKingdom that includes Scotland, Wales and Ireland, as we mentioned earlier,is only a recent political artifact.

After the Gupta Empire, the Chalukya-Chola dynasty consolidated most ofIndia in the south, leading expeditions even up to the north of the Gangesriver.

Later on, much of India would be consolidated again under the Mughals, andafter the Mughal empire disintegrated, by the British.

So while the British were the last power, before the current state of India, toadministratively consolidate its territory (as well as to divide it up as they left),they were by no means the first ones to do so.

Even when multiple kingdoms existed, these kingdoms were not like thecountries of today with a passport and visa regime needed to cross and all


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kinds of regulations on movement of goods and people. A continued exchangeof ideas, people, goods and scholarship took place throughout thesub-continent, largely unmindful of the boundaries of kingdoms.

Furthermore, the territorial boundaries of India were largely maintained. Therewere few, if any, times before the British came when large parts of India wereconsolidated into kingdoms that were centered outside it. There were nosignificant long-lasting kingdoms, for instance, that ruled from Persia to theGanges plain, or from Burma to Bengal, or from China or Tibet to Delhi. Therewas a separateness and integrity to this land, unlike European countries oreven Europe as a whole. For centuries, the Romans consolidated north Africaand southern Europe into one contiguous centrally ruled empire, as did theOttomans after them. Central Asia became part of one external empire oranother.

Even in the case of the British, when all of India became part of a larger empirecentered outside it for the first time, it was clear that it was distinct fromBurma, for instance, even though they were contiguous land areas ruled by theBritish. And thus the freedom movements in Burma and India were separate.Burma and India did not become one after their respective independence, norwas there any call by Indian or Burmese nationalists to do so.

Thus there was an idea of India that made it be regarded as a separate andwhole, even through political change and shifting boundaries of internalkingdoms.

The Idea of India

This then becomes our second question is the idea of India as a unit a newidea brought by the British or did it exist long before the British came? Did thepeople of this vast land recognize that they were linked together? Did theyshare a common story of their civilization, of their Indian-ness,their Bharatiyata? Remarkably, the idea of India, as BharatavarshaorAryavrata, appears to have been alive for thousands of years in our stories,thousands of years before there was an America or a Great Britain or a Mexicoor France.

From the Manusmriti, we learn of the land of Aryavrata stretching from theHimalayas and Vindhyas all the way to the eastern and western oceans.Without the idea of Bharata, there could have been no epic called theMaha-Bharata that engaged kings throughout this land of Bharata. The story


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of Mahabharata shows a remarkable degree of pan-Indian context and inter-relationships, from Gandhari, the wife of Drithrashtra who came fromGandhara, (spelled as Kandahar in present-day Afghanistan), Draupadi fromPanchala (present day Jammu and Kashmir), all the way to Arjun meeting andmarrying the Naga princess Uloopi on a visit to Manipur in the east (fromwhere he gets the `Mani or Gem). Interestingly, Arjuna is said to have gone ona pilgrimage to the holy places of the east when this happens, showing thecurrent North-East was very much linked in this. Finally, Krishna himself isfrom Mathura and Vrindavana (in UP) though his kingdom itself is in Dwarka(Gujarat).

Similarly, the story of Ramayana draws the north-south linkage from Ayodhyaall the way down to Rameshwaram, at the tip of which is finally the land ofLanka. Note that it is not, for this particular thesis, important that the storiesare historically accurate. What we are interested in rather is whether the ideaof India or Bharatavarsha or Aryavrata as a culturally linked entity existed inthe minds of the story-tellers and ultimately in the minds of the people towhom these stories were sacred. And these stories were then taken and toldand retold in all the languages of the people of this great civilization, till thestories themselves established a linkage among us and to the sacred geographythey celebrated. This sacred geography is what makes northerners flock toTirupati and southerners to the Kumbha Mela.

And the diffusion of these common ideas was certainly not only from the northto south. The great Bhakti movement started in the 6th and 7th centuries ADhad its roots in the south in the Tamil and Kannada languages. Even while theboundaries of kingdoms changed, enormous cultural and religious unitycontinued to take place across India. It started off with the Alvars and theNayanars (Tamil, 7th to 10th century AD), Kamban (Tamil, 11th century),Basava (Kannada, 12th century) and moved on to Chaitanya Mahaprabu(Bengali, 15th century), Ramananda (15th century, born in Allahabad of southIndia parentage, guru of Kabir, 15th century), Raskhan (16th century), Surdas(Braj, 16th century), Mirabia (Rajasthan, 16th century), Tulsidas (Avadhi, 16thcentury), Nanak (Punjabi, 16th century) and Tukaram (Marathi, 17th century),among the many. All these together weaved a garland across the land thatspoke again of our common truths, our common cultural heritage.

The Bhakti movement retold our ancient stories in the language of thecommon people, in Marathi and Bengali, in Avadhi (present day UP) andBhojpuri (present day Bihar), in Gujarati and Punjabi and in Rajasthani. We


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can marvel at the cultural unity in India, where while theBhakti poets initiatedthe great movement for devotion to Shiva in the south, the erudite philosophyof Kashmir Shaivism was being developed coevally in the north. Or thatKamban in the south was the first poet to take the story of Rama to the majorregional languages, and Tulsidas, much closer to Ayodhya, came centurieslater. Or that the great Krishna bhaktaChaitanya was celebrating his devotionto the King of Dwarka in Bengal while Tukaram sang praises of Lord Vithal inthe west. An immense body of pan-Indian worship revolved around the triad ofVishnu, Shiva and Shakti in their various forms whether as Rama, Krishna,Sri Venkateshwara, Sri Dakshinamurti, Jagdamba, Durga Mata or Kali. Thesecommon stories were told and retold without the mandate of any centralchurch and seeped through the pores of the land of Bharata, forging a sharedbond, unlike any other seen on the planet.

It was this idea of civilizational unity and sacred geography of India thatinspired Shankaracharya to not only enunciate the mysteries of the Vedantabut to go around setting upmathas circumscribing the land of India in a largediamond shape. While sage Agasthya crossed the Vindhya and came downsouth, Shankracharya was born in the village of Kalady in Kerala and traveledin the opposite direction for the establishment of dharma. If this land was notlinked in philosophical and cultural exchanges, and there was no notion of aunified nation, why then did Shankracharya embark on hiscountrywide digvijay yatra? What prompted him to establish centersspreading light for the four quadrants of this land Dwarka in the west (inGujarat), Puri in the east (in Orissa), Shringeri in the south (Karnataka) andBadrinath (Uttaranchal) in the north? He is then said to have gone to Srinagar(the abode of `Sri or the Shakti) in Kashmir, which still celebrates this in thename of Shankaracharya Hill. What better demonstration that the idea of thecultural unity of the land was alive more than a thousand years ago?

And yet, these stories are not taught to us in our schools in India. We learninstead, in our colonial schools, that the British created India and gave us alink language, as if we were not talking to each other for thousands of years,traveling, telling and retelling stories before the British came. How else didthese ideas travel so rapidly through the landmass of India, and how didShankracharya circumscribe India, debating, talking and setting upinstitutions all within his short lifespan of 32 years?


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Fig 2: Ideas of India: Shankaracharya and Shakti

These ideas of our unity have permeated all our diverse darshanas. We havetalked aboutBhakti and Vedanta and the epics of the Ramayana and theMahabharata. But this idea of unity was not limited to particular schools. Theywere equally present in the tantric schools that exerted a tremendous influenceon popular worship. Thus we have the legend of Shakti, whose body wascarried by Shiva and cut up by Vishnu, landing in 51 places throughout thelandmass of India that are now the site of the Shakti Peetham temples. Thebody of Shakti, or so the story goes, fell all the way from Neelayadakshi Kovilin Tamil Nadu to Vaishno Devi in Jammu, from Pavagadh in Gujarat to theKamakshi temple in Assam and 47 other places.

Why would the story conceive of these pieces of Shakti sanctifying and fallingprecisely all over the landmass of India, rather than all of them falling in TamilNadu or Assam or Himachal (or alternately, Yunan (Greece) or China, or somesupposed `Aryan homeland in Central Asia) unless someone had a conceptionof the unity of the land and civilization of Bharatavarsha? Whether thesestories are actual or symbolic, represent real events or myths, it is clear fromthem that the idea of India existed in the minds of those that told these storiesand those that listened. Together, all these stories wove and bound us together,along with migration, marriages and exchange of ideas into a culture unique inthe story of mankind. A nation that was uniquely bound together in myriads ofways, yet not cast into a mono-conceptual homogeneity of language, worship,belief or practice by the diktat of a centralized church, intolerant of diversity.

And this unity as nation has been with us far before the idea of America


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existed. Far before the Franks had moved into northern France and theVisigoths into Spain, before the Christian Church was established and Islamwas born. They have been there before Great Britain existed, before the Saxonshad moved into Britannia. They have been there while empires have fallen,from when Rome was a tiny village to when it ruled an empire that rose andcollapsed.

Thus the Arabs and Persians already had a conception of Hind far before theMughal Empire was established. If we suggest that their conception of Hindwas derived only from their contact with Sindh in western India, why wouldthe British, when they landed in Bengal, form the EastIndia Company, unlessthe conception of the land of India (a term derived from the original Hind) wasshared by the natives and the British? They used this name much before theyhad managed to politically hold sway over much of India, and before theyeducated us that no India existed before their arrival. Why would thePortuguese celebrate the discovery of a sea-route to India when Vasco de Gamahad landed in Calicut in the south, if India was a creation of the BritishEmpire?

The answer is obvious. Because the conception of India, a civilization based inthe Indian sub-continent, predates the rise and fall of these empires. True, thatlarge parts of India were under unified political rule only during certain periodsof time (though these several hundreds of years are still enormous by the scaleof existence of most other countries throughout the globe) such as under theMauryas or the Mughals. But those facts serve to hide rather than reveal thetruth till we understand the history of the rest of the world and realize thehistoric social, political and religious unity of this land. We are not merely acountry; we are a civilizational country, among very few other countries on theplanet.

Some Other Civilizational Countries

While we occupy the rarefied space of countries that have as much legitimacyand continuity as civilizations, it is worth examining a few others civilizationsthat have lasted. The country of Greece is one such country. However, Greece asa contemporary state was established in the 19th century, coughed up by theOttoman Empire as it was breathing its last. Over the centuries, Greece has notexisted as an independent political entity, having been absorbed by the RomanEmpire and assimilated into the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Ironically,the rise of contemporary Greek nationalism can be traced to the late 18thcentury, when Greek students studying in Europe came to realize that their


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civilization was actually highly regarded in western Europe. This resurgentpride about the ancient Greek civilization formed the basis of the movement toestablish the modern Greek state even though there was no political continuitybetween the two entities.

If the continuity of political unification is the criteria that is used to define thelegitimacy of a country, then Greece is far less legitimate than India, and othercountries around the globe are even less so. The boundaries of thecontemporary Greek state do not match with the original Greek Empire.Furthermore, even ancient Greece constituted of politically independentcity-states, united more by the feeling that they belonged to the same culture,rather than having political unity. So clearly the measure of politicalunification, even when it did hold true for large parts of India over the ages, isnot the relevant criteria, but the idea of a shared culture and civilization.

The only other continuous civilizations that come close to India as legitimatenations are nation-civilizations like Egypt, Iran and China. But Egypt, thoughold, having been assimilated in various empires and conquered first byChristianity and then by Islam, hardly retains much contact with its ancienttraditions, languages or indigenous religion. Similarly Iran, the inheritor of thePersian empire which reached its peak in the 6th century BC, was assimilatedinto other empires and finally conquered by Islamic Arabs it retains little ofits Zoroastrian roots, though it retains its pre-Islamic language, albeit in Arabscript. China is the other civilizational nation that can claim to have alegitimacy and continuity similar to India. However, for most of its history,Chinese civilization developed and concentrated in the Eastern plains.Consolidated rule, either political, social or religious/ideological over the entirevast area that present-day China occupies is relatively recent. Indian Buddhismobviously had a huge influence on China. Interestingly, despite communismand the Cultural Revolution, Chinese intellectuals have sought to link the rootsof present day communist ideology with the teachings of Confucius.

So there we have it. India is one of the few nations of the world with acontinuity of civilization and an ancient conception of nationhood. In itsreligious, civilizational, cultural and linguistic continuity, it truly stands alone.This continuity was fostered by its unique geography and its resilient religioustraditions. Unlike any other country on the planet, it retained these traditionsdespite both Islamic and Christian conquest, when most countries lost theirsand were completely converted when losing to even one of these crusadingsystems. The Persians fell, the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Babylon were


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lost, the Celtic religion largely vanished, and the mighty Aztecs werevanquished, destroyed and completely Christianized. Yet Bharata stands. Itstands in our stories, our languages, our pluralism and our unity. And as longas we remember these stories, keep our languages and worship the sacred landof our ancestors, Bharata will stand. It is only if we forget these truths thatBharata will cease to be. That is precisely why the British tried to hard to makeus forget them.

Purva-paksha: the opposing side

Indian scholarly traditions often presented opposing viewpoints with thethesis. Here are some objections that may arise.

Objection #1

What you are calling the Indian civilization is actually the Sanskriticcivilization of the Aryans who were invaders.

There are many theories about migrations of people into the Indiansub-continent. Some contend that a tribe of people called the Aryans migratedfrom somewhere in the Middle East or Central Asia. Others contend that nosuch migration took place and the Aryans were original inhabitants of theSindhu (or Sindhu-Sarswati) region. Still others hold that `Aryan was neveran ethnic term but the word `Arya in Sanskrit basically means a noble person.

In any case, practically all countries that exist today were settled by migrants.The Saxons, the Franks and the Visigoths were all migrants to westernEuropean countries such as present day England, France and Spain. NorthAmerica was recently settled (or more accurately, usurped) by migrants. Eventhe Native Americans in North and South America are considered to havemigrated from Asia 30,000 years ago. At some point in history, it may be thatall people came from Africa. Clearly, using this criterion, all nations of todayare illegitimate.

So the validity or lack thereof of a particular Aryan migration theory, evenassuming such a migration ever actually took place, does not concern us.Suffice to say, that even those that subscribe to the theory of an invasion ormigration place the date no later than 1500 BC. By contrast, the Saxon reachedpresent-day England in only the 5th or 6th century AD, about 2000 years afterthe hypothetical Aryan migration yet England is considered an Anglo-Saxoncountry and no one wastes a whole lot of energy arguing otherwise or creating


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political factions representing the `pre-Saxon people. That a hypotheticalAryan invasion 3500 years ago is still relevant to our politics shows the absurddivisions created in our minds by colonial theories, intended to keep usfighting amongst ourselves on artificial boundaries.

So, regardless of whether there were such a people as Aryans or whether theycame from the outside, our interest is in the fact that the people who haveinhabited India over the last 3000 or more years formed both a conception ofIndian nationhood and a distinct civilizational continuity.

Our hymns sing glories of the Himalayas, not of the Caucuses. Our stories talkof the Vindhyachal not a mountain in the Central Asia. We sing of the Gangaand the Cauvery, not the Amu Darya. Thus for thousands of years the peoplewho have lived in India have celebrated its sacred geography. Regardless oftheir origins in pre-history, our ancestral people made the land of India theirhome and wove stories around its features.

Objection #2

Isnt India simply like all of Europe, sharing some common historyand religious ideas but no more?

Parts of Europe came under the rule of the Roman Empire and later theByzantine and Ottoman Empires. None of these Empires held sway over all ofwhat is the territory of Europe today. Rather, their areas of control were largelyaround the Mediterranean Sea parts of southern Europe, northern Africa andthe Middle East. There has also been some uniformity of religion in Europeimposed by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.But, there has been no empire of Europe. Eastern, western and ScandinavianEurope have had substantially different histories and cultural, linguistic andethnic origins.

There is a more significant difference. The land of India has been thought ofand considered a sacred whole by the people of India in a way that is simplynot true of Europe.

As the Shankracharya of Kanchi said recently, for thousands of years, Indiansthroughout the land have woken up in the morning and sang a hymncelebrating the holy rivers of Ganga, Yamuna, Narmada, Godavari, Sindu,Saraswati and Cauvery as part of nitya kriya, or daily worship.

gange ca yamune caiva, godAvari sarasvati


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narmade sindho kAveri, jalesminn sannidhiM kuru

Thus our hymns and religious stories not only share common themes, heroesand deities, they also uniquely link us to this particular land in a way Christianstories do not link to the land of Europe. There are no hymns that Europeanssang that spoke of the land from the Urals to Scandinavia or from the ArcticOcean to the Mediterranean as one. No one sang devotional songs listing allthe major rivers of Europe, east to west. The idea of Europe is like anothercontinent, like Africa or Americas with some shared geography and historybut no historic conception of the integrated whole as a unity that wasrecognized among all the common people.

Thus there have been no religious stories of Europe linked to its particularboundaries and capturing the common fealty of the people, unlike the story ofShakti being dispersed over the land of India in peethams that millions ofpeople visit, or the sage who set up mathas in the four quadrants of the land,or who wrote the Mahabharata, or who wrote of the landof Bharatvarshaand Aryavrata. So there is a unity to India, an Indiannationhood that is far greater than any shared similarities between Europe.

Objection #3

If the British hadnt been here, wouldnt we be a bunch of fightingkingdoms?

The British certainly contributed to the political re-unification of the land, justas the Mughals had done before that. But they re-unified politically an existingcivilization entity. This entity had existed long before they came, had beenpolitically re-united in the past and will exist long after they have gone.

The British experience is part of who we are today, so they certainly added toour civilization. But the British also divided and partitioned us, not onlyphysically but also mentally. They also impoverished us and planted manyseeds of divisive scholarship that cut us from our roots and our sense ofnationhood.

There are many entities today who would see us become a bunch of fightingstates, all the easier for political, religious and economic conquest. But adivision of India is like cutting a human body. We are already bleeding fromthe cuts inflicted 50 years ago. Eternal vigilance is the price of our freedom.Telling our common stories, the core of our nationhood.


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Objection #4

You are excluding Islamic contributions and Indian Muslims fromyour definition

This essay is about finding the historic roots of the Indian civilization anddefining who we are as people and as a nation. We have had many migrantsand invaders. While Islam has contributed to the Indian civilization, our rootsare much older than when Prophet Mohammad first appeared in Arabia in the6th century AD, so our civilization cannot be defined by Islam. Alexander theGreek came to our shores, so did the Kushans and Mongols and Persians andTurks. All of them added their contributions to our civilization as we did totheirs. The Mughal Empire helped in our political re-unification. But none ofthem define who we are.

We had the great Chinese civilization towards the north and the Persiancivilization towards our west. Each of them influenced us as we influencedthem. But because the Chinese came under Buddhist influence from India doesnot mean that they cease to be the Chinese civilization, an entity with adistinct cultural flavor and history from India.

Similarly, the Persians and the Turks came in many waves and contributed toIndian culture, even as we did to theirs. This does not mean that ourcivilization suddenly became Persian or Turkish. Some of these people settledin India, some of them brought a new religion called Islam and converted someof the existing people. All those who ultimately accept India as their homelandare accepted as Indians, for we have been a welcoming land. It would be astrange case indeed if conversion to Islam led people to deny the roots of theircivilization. Do the Persians cease to be Persians, now that they are Muslims?

Islam does not define nationhood. If it did, the entire region from Saudi Arabiato Pakistan would be one country. Iran and Iraq would be one large Islamiccountry, rather than separate entities based on Persian and Babyloniancivilizational roots. Indonesia and Malaysia would be one country.

Thus the civilizational roots of India belong to all Indians, Hindus, Muslimsand Christians. Indonesian Muslims dont trace their civilizational roots fromArabia, but from the Indonesian culture developed over the centuries. As SaeedNaqvi writes, the Ramayana ballet is performed in Indonesia by 150 namaz-saying Muslims under the shadow of Yog Jakartas magnificent temples for thepast 27 years without a break Indonesians can apparently celebrate their


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civilizational roots without conflict of their being Muslims. There is no reasonthat Muslim Indians feel any differently unless led by the creation of fear orsustained demagoguery to believe otherwise.

Objection #5

Indian Muslims are Arabs, Persians and Turks, not originallyIndian

Some Indian Muslims are descendents of Persian, Turks and others. Manymore are descendents of people who have been in India for thousands of years.In the Indian Muslim caste system, the invaders were considered higher castesthan the natives and tracing ones `foreign status often yielded greaterprestige, leading more people to identify themselves thus[3]. As late as theearly 20th century, some Indian Muslims continued to identify themselves as`Hindu Mussalmans (as they might have been called) to census takersmarking the civilizational, rather than religious (in a separative sense)meaning of the term Hindu[4].

In either case, it is somewhat irrelevant. Even the Persians and Turks whosettled here in numbers came here far before America, for instance, existed as acountry. The Indian civilization has assimilated many people into its bosomand there is no reason that the descendents of the Persians or Turks whomigrated to India can be considered any less Indian as result.

Objection #6

You say that Islam is not the basis of nationhood, yet Pakistan isfounded on the very premise. Your geographical conception of Indiaincludes present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. Do you want tocreate an Akhand Bharat and re-unite India by force?

Pakistan is an entity with no civilization basis. In an attempt to create one,Pakistani history textbooks teach that Pakistan was established by Babur as`Mughlistan[5]. However, Babur was a Turk of Mongol descent and themajority of people that live in Pakistan today are certainly not descendents ofTurks or Mongols nor is their civilisation Turkic. Pakistans crisis of identityemerges primarily from the rejection of their ancient civilizational roots in thename of `religion. Till they can reconcile to their roots, they will remain arootless nation, preserved per force by the state apparatus as long as it lasts.

The idea of Bharata certainly goes from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from


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Sindh to Manipur. However, the idea of re-uniting Pakistan or Bangladesh toIndia is unviable at this point in history. The best one can hope for is that thepeople of Pakistan and Bangladesh themselves become aware at some point oftheir deep civilization roots that have been taken away from them in the nameof religion.

Objection #7

India is not a `Hindu rashtra, you are trying to make India into aHindu rashtra.

The interest of this essay is in establishing what is true, not in any politicalflavor of the day. In the multi-century big picture, particular politicalmovements or systems of government will come and go, but the history of ourcivilizational roots still needs to be understood and articulated.

Our reading of history certainly does not support Hindu rashtra as a religiousconcept that means it is only for those people who are currently called`Hindus as a religious term. Classically, Hindu has been a civilizational, not areligious term, nor is it exclusive. `Hinduism is different from Abrahmicreligion in this regard.

Surprising enough, even the article in Encarta on nationhood recognizes that:

India is a nation in which the Hindu religion served as the cohesivetraditional element in uniting peoples of various races, religions andlanguages.

Has Encarta been saffronized? Or is it merely stating the obvious, albeit in awesternized framework? That there is no India without what has been called`Hinduism. This by no mean implies that all the people have to `convert to areligion called Hinduism to be Indians. It also doesnt imply that those whoworship Allah or Christ as a religious idea are inherently lesser citizens ordisloyal. Rather, it is simply recognition of the civilizational heritage that linksus together as a nation.

In contemporary times, the civilizational term Hindu has been replaced by theterm Indians. The roots of the Indian civilization, when the concept of the landof Bharata or Aryavrata was articulated and absorbed by the people of thisland, are thousands of years old. Even though much of what constitutes theseroots is now classified as `Hinduism, which is unfortunate and limiting, thewide diversity of our civilizational beliefs and quest for knowledge and


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understanding cannot be confined to a religious dogma or belief system itbelongs to all Indians. Furthermore, pluralism is a basic principle of Hinduthought, which leaves plenty of room for other beliefs in the framework ofmutual respect as long as these beliefs are not directed at destroying theroots of the very civilization that holds them.

Certainly, those that are called `Jains today have stories that refer to Krishna,the `Sikh Guru Granth Sahib has hundreds of mentions of `Rama and manyMuslims are quite happy to acknowledge their roots in the Indian civilization.Hundreds of Indian Muslim poets have celebrated their civilizational roots Abdul Rahim Khan-e-khan wrote poems in praise of Rama, in Sanskrit; JusticeIsmail of Chennai was the leading authority on Kamban Ramayana; KaziNazrul Islam wrote powerful revolutionary poetry in Bengali replete withreferences to Kali. In recent times, the script for the entire Mahabharta epicwas written by Masoom Raza Rahi; and who can ignore the inspiration thatour Gita-reading president Abdul Kalam from Rameswaram is providing to thenation.

Similarly, Indian Christians can be both Indian and Christian without denyingtheir cultural roots. Says Fr Michael Rosario, who teaches Indology at St Pius:As an Indian priest, Indian spirituality is my heritage and culture. Fr MichaelGonsalves goes a step further: We must substitute the Old Testament of theBible with Indian history, scriptures and arts. For us, the Holy Land should beIndia; the sacred river the Ganges; the sacred mountain the Himalayas, theheroes of the past not Moses, or David, but Sri Ram or Krishna.

All these people have had no trouble in reconciling their reverence to Allah orJesus without denying the civilizational heritage that binds us together.

The converse of this is also true that the way to break us apart is tosystematically deny and denigrate our civilizational roots. This is exactly thetactic the British used.

Thus the evangelical Baptists preaching in the North East have over the lastfew decades told the Nagas that they dont really belong with the Indiancivilization despite the fact that they have a place in our stories as far back asthe Mahabharata, when Arjun goes on a pilgrimage to the holy places of theeast and marries the Naga princess Uloopi. Similarly do Manipur, Tripura,Meghalaya, Assam and the other states in the North East.

The situation in Kashmir, spurred on by Pakistan, is a surviving artifact of the


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two-nation theory even while Kashmir has always been a significant part of theIndian story, its religion and philosophy. The Khalistani separatist movementis also the outcome of decades of colonial scholarship that continues till todayto prove that Sikhs are completely different from the `caste-ridden Hindus andemphasizes the separateness rather than the common roots. While the Khalsapanth was clearly established as a separate path, the teachings of Guru Nanakcan be placed very precisely in the Bhakti tradition while keeping to the idea ofa Nirguna Brahma.Guru Granth Sahib is liberally saturated in thephilosophical and religious streams of Indiandharma, yet contemporaryscholars continuing the colonial tradition often fail to educate people aboutthis. The root of all movements to break India are ultimately found in denyingthe religious and cultural unity of the Indian people whether it be found inmovements inspired by colonial scholarship, communism, pan-Islamism orevangelical Christianity.

Objection #8

I am not religious, but am a patriotic secular Indian. Why is all thisrelevant today? I am uncomfortable with the idea of religiondefining our nation we are a secular country.

The idea of being `religious is ultimately a western idea. In the Indiantradition, there were atheistic and materialistic schools of thought, likeCharvaka, all of which get lumped under `Hinduism. Obviously, if we take theAbrahmic idea of religion, atheistic religion is absurd you cant really be aChristian atheist or a `Muslim atheist not so long ago you would be hungfor heresy. Hinduism is a colonial term for the rich banquet of the dharmictraditions that cannot be combined under the framework of religion. Indiancivilization is a much broader concept than narrow restrictive dogmas thatdefine religions.

A secular state is a system of government. We have embraced secularismprecisely because of our long civilizational history of accepting plurality ofthought and worship. This is how it must remain. However, secularism doesnot define nationhood in any way. There are plenty of secular states. What isunique about us is that we are Indians with a history of civilization rooted inour religious and cultural ideas. That is why we are a nation today, not becauseof secularism. If false notions of secularism prevent us from understanding theroots of our nationhood, we will all be the lesser for it.

But to get back to the question, nations are born, but are also made. If we fail


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to understand our common civilization, we will ultimately fall prey to thosethat seek to destroy us by convincing us that we have none, that India is aBritish construction and so on. The effect of this will not only be a separationfrom the Indian state, but from the Indian tradition. To see the devastatingeffects of this, consider that we are still paying the price of our first partitionbased on accepting colonial ideas and still struggling with its wounds.

If India gets split up into different countries, we will all lose there will bemore wars, more armies, and all the lines we draw will be artificial and straightacross our hearts.

Every child in America in a public school recites an oath of allegiance everymorning in front of the American flag. They obviously take their nationhoodseriously, even as they are a young nation. While we are old as a civilization,we are young as a country. Our education is based on colonial scholarship.Nationhood is ultimately a feeling of being one people. To strengthen thisfeeling and being resilient to divisive propaganda, we need to see that everychild in India is educated about why we are a nation, lest we forget why we aretogether.

Sankrant Sanu 2002-2010. All rights reserved.

Original URL:http://sankrant.org/2003/10/why-india-is-a-nation/


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