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sankrant.org
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and looking at the map below, reflecting on the significance of this geography
before we go further.
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Political Unity
Among the earliest political consolidations, even by the dates of present
colonial scholarship, was under the Mauryas from the 6th century BC to the
3rd century BC, when most of India was under their rule.
After the Mauryas, there was repeated political consolidation of large parts of
India, even when all of it was not under a single rule. The Kanishkas
consolidated the north from the Hindu Kush Mountains to Bihar and south to
Gujarat and Central India. The Satavahana Empire, considered to be founded
by high officials of the Mauryas, consolidated the south and central parts.
The Gupta Empire again politically consolidated the area from Afghanistan to
Assam and south to the Narmada, possibly exerting political control even
further down south. Samudragupta led an expedition all the way down to
Kanchipuram in present Tamil Nadu. While the southern areas were not
formally part of the Empire, they were quite likely de-facto vassal states, paying
tribute to the Emperor. The only other major comparable empires in the world
of this size at the time were the Chinese and the Roman.
Note that it would be a thousand years after the Mauryan Empire was
established and even much after the Gupta Empire that the Anglo-Saxons in
the 5th century AD would first move into the region that would later be called
England. It would be nearly five hundred more years before the territory of
England would be consolidated as an independent political entity. Only much
later would there be attempts at unity of `Great Britain. The `United
Kingdom 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 of
India in the south, leading expeditions even up to the north of the Ganges
river.
Later on, much of India would be consolidated again under the Mughals, and
after the Mughal empire disintegrated, by the British.
So while the British were the last power, before the current state of India, to
administratively 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 the
countries of today with a passport and visa regime needed to cross and all
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of Mahabharata shows a remarkable degree of pan-Indian context and interrelationships, from Gandhari, the wife of Drithrashtra who came from
Gandhara, (spelled as Kandahar in present-day Afghanistan), Draupadi from
Panchala (present day Jammu and Kashmir), all the way to Arjun meeting and
marrying the Naga princess Uloopi on a visit to Manipur in the east (from
where he gets the `Mani or Gem). Interestingly, Arjuna is said to have gone on
a pilgrimage to the holy places of the east when this happens, showing the
current North-East was very much linked in this. Finally, Krishna himself is
from Mathura and Vrindavana (in UP) though his kingdom itself is in Dwarka
(Gujarat).
Similarly, the story of Ramayana draws the north-south linkage from Ayodhya
all the way down to Rameshwaram, at the tip of which is finally the land of
Lanka. Note that it is not, for this particular thesis, important that the stories
are historically accurate. What we are interested in rather is whether the idea
of India or Bharatavarsha or Aryavrata as a culturally linked entity existed in
the minds of the story-tellers and ultimately in the minds of the people to
whom these stories were sacred. And these stories were then taken and told
and retold in all the languages of the people of this great civilization, till the
stories themselves established a linkage among us and to the sacred geography
they celebrated. This sacred geography is what makes northerners flock to
Tirupati and southerners to the Kumbha Mela.
And the diffusion of these common ideas was certainly not only from the north
to south. The great Bhakti movement started in the 6th and 7th centuries AD
had its roots in the south in the Tamil and Kannada languages. Even while the
boundaries of kingdoms changed, enormous cultural and religious unity
continued to take place across India. It started off with the Alvars and the
Nayanars (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 south
India parentage, guru of Kabir, 15th century), Raskhan (16th century), Surdas
(Braj, 16th century), Mirabia (Rajasthan, 16th century), Tulsidas (Avadhi, 16th
century), Nanak (Punjabi, 16th century) and Tukaram (Marathi, 17th century),
among the many. All these together weaved a garland across the land that
spoke again of our common truths, our common cultural heritage.
The Bhakti movement retold our ancient stories in the language of the
common people, in Marathi and Bengali, in Avadhi (present day UP) and
Bhojpuri (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 initiated
the great movement for devotion to Shiva in the south, the erudite philosophy
of Kashmir Shaivism was being developed coevally in the north. Or that
Kamban in the south was the first poet to take the story of Rama to the major
regional languages, and Tulsidas, much closer to Ayodhya, came centuries
later. Or that the great Krishna bhaktaChaitanya was celebrating his devotion
to the King of Dwarka in Bengal while Tukaram sang praises of Lord Vithal in
the west. An immense body of pan-Indian worship revolved around the triad of
Vishnu, Shiva and Shakti in their various forms whether as Rama, Krishna,
Sri Venkateshwara, Sri Dakshinamurti, Jagdamba, Durga Mata or Kali. These
common stories were told and retold without the mandate of any central
church and seeped through the pores of the land of Bharata, forging a shared
bond, unlike any other seen on the planet.
It was this idea of civilizational unity and sacred geography of India that
inspired Shankaracharya to not only enunciate the mysteries of the Vedanta
but to go around setting upmathas circumscribing the land of India in a large
diamond shape. While sage Agasthya crossed the Vindhya and came down
south, Shankracharya was born in the village of Kalady in Kerala and traveled
in the opposite direction for the establishment of dharma. If this land was not
linked in philosophical and cultural exchanges, and there was no notion of a
unified nation, why then did Shankracharya embark on his
countrywide digvijay yatra? What prompted him to establish centers
spreading light for the four quadrants of this land Dwarka in the west (in
Gujarat), Puri in the east (in Orissa), Shringeri in the south (Karnataka) and
Badrinath (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 the
name of Shankaracharya Hill. What better demonstration that the idea of the
cultural 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 learn
instead, in our colonial schools, that the British created India and gave us a
link 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 did
these ideas travel so rapidly through the landmass of India, and how did
Shankracharya circumscribe India, debating, talking and setting up
institutions all within his short lifespan of 32 years?
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existed. Far before the Franks had moved into northern France and the
Visigoths into Spain, before the Christian Church was established and Islam
was born. They have been there before Great Britain existed, before the Saxons
had 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 and
collapsed.
Thus the Arabs and Persians already had a conception of Hind far before the
Mughal Empire was established. If we suggest that their conception of Hind
was derived only from their contact with Sindh in western India, why would
the British, when they landed in Bengal, form the EastIndia Company, unless
the conception of the land of India (a term derived from the original Hind) was
shared by the natives and the British? They used this name much before they
had managed to politically hold sway over much of India, and before they
educated us that no India existed before their arrival. Why would the
Portuguese celebrate the discovery of a sea-route to India when Vasco de Gama
had landed in Calicut in the south, if India was a creation of the British
Empire?
The answer is obvious. Because the conception of India, a civilization based in
the Indian sub-continent, predates the rise and fall of these empires. True, that
large parts of India were under unified political rule only during certain periods
of time (though these several hundreds of years are still enormous by the scale
of existence of most other countries throughout the globe) such as under the
Mauryas or the Mughals. But those facts serve to hide rather than reveal the
truth till we understand the history of the rest of the world and realize the
historic social, political and religious unity of this land. We are not merely a
country; we are a civilizational country, among very few other countries on the
planet.
Some Other Civilizational Countries
While we occupy the rarefied space of countries that have as much legitimacy
and continuity as civilizations, it is worth examining a few others civilizations
that have lasted. The country of Greece is one such country. However, Greece as
a contemporary state was established in the 19th century, coughed up by the
Ottoman Empire as it was breathing its last. Over the centuries, Greece has not
existed as an independent political entity, having been absorbed by the Roman
Empire and assimilated into the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Ironically,
the rise of contemporary Greek nationalism can be traced to the late 18th
century, when Greek students studying in Europe came to realize that their
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lost, the Celtic religion largely vanished, and the mighty Aztecs were
vanquished, destroyed and completely Christianized. Yet Bharata stands. It
stands in our stories, our languages, our pluralism and our unity. And as long
as we remember these stories, keep our languages and worship the sacred land
of our ancestors, Bharata will stand. It is only if we forget these truths that
Bharata will cease to be. That is precisely why the British tried to hard to make
us forget them.
Purva-paksha: the opposing side
Indian scholarly traditions often presented opposing viewpoints with the
thesis. Here are some objections that may arise.
Objection #1
What you are calling the Indian civilization is actually the Sanskritic
civilization of the Aryans who were invaders.
There are many theories about migrations of people into the Indian
sub-continent. Some contend that a tribe of people called the Aryans migrated
from somewhere in the Middle East or Central Asia. Others contend that no
such migration took place and the Aryans were original inhabitants of the
Sindhu (or Sindhu-Sarswati) region. Still others hold that `Aryan was never
an 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 western
European countries such as present day England, France and Spain. North
America was recently settled (or more accurately, usurped) by migrants. Even
the Native Americans in North and South America are considered to have
migrated from Asia 30,000 years ago. At some point in history, it may be that
all people came from Africa. Clearly, using this criterion, all nations of today
are illegitimate.
So the validity or lack thereof of a particular Aryan migration theory, even
assuming 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 or
migration place the date no later than 1500 BC. By contrast, the Saxon reached
present-day England in only the 5th or 6th century AD, about 2000 years after
the hypothetical Aryan migration yet England is considered an Anglo-Saxon
country and no one wastes a whole lot of energy arguing otherwise or creating
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Objection #4
You are excluding Islamic contributions and Indian Muslims from
your definition
This essay is about finding the historic roots of the Indian civilization and
defining who we are as people and as a nation. We have had many migrants
and invaders. While Islam has contributed to the Indian civilization, our roots
are much older than when Prophet Mohammad first appeared in Arabia in the
6th century AD, so our civilization cannot be defined by Islam. Alexander the
Greek came to our shores, so did the Kushans and Mongols and Persians and
Turks. All of them added their contributions to our civilization as we did to
theirs. The Mughal Empire helped in our political re-unification. But none of
them define who we are.
We had the great Chinese civilization towards the north and the Persian
civilization towards our west. Each of them influenced us as we influenced
them. But because the Chinese came under Buddhist influence from India does
not mean that they cease to be the Chinese civilization, an entity with a
distinct cultural flavor and history from India.
Similarly, the Persians and the Turks came in many waves and contributed to
Indian culture, even as we did to theirs. This does not mean that our
civilization suddenly became Persian or Turkish. Some of these people settled
in India, some of them brought a new religion called Islam and converted some
of the existing people. All those who ultimately accept India as their homeland
are accepted as Indians, for we have been a welcoming land. It would be a
strange case indeed if conversion to Islam led people to deny the roots of their
civilization. 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 Arabia
to Pakistan would be one country. Iran and Iraq would be one large Islamic
country, rather than separate entities based on Persian and Babylonian
civilizational roots. Indonesia and Malaysia would be one country.
Thus the civilizational roots of India belong to all Indians, Hindus, Muslims
and Christians. Indonesian Muslims dont trace their civilizational roots from
Arabia, but from the Indonesian culture developed over the centuries. As Saeed
Naqvi writes, the Ramayana ballet is performed in Indonesia by 150 namazsaying Muslims under the shadow of Yog Jakartas magnificent temples for the
past 27 years without a break Indonesians can apparently celebrate their
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two-nation theory even while Kashmir has always been a significant part of the
Indian story, its religion and philosophy. The Khalistani separatist movement
is also the outcome of decades of colonial scholarship that continues till today
to prove that Sikhs are completely different from the `caste-ridden Hindus and
emphasizes the separateness rather than the common roots. While the Khalsa
panth was clearly established as a separate path, the teachings of Guru Nanak
can be placed very precisely in the Bhakti tradition while keeping to the idea of
a Nirguna Brahma.Guru Granth Sahib is liberally saturated in the
philosophical and religious streams of Indiandharma, yet contemporary
scholars continuing the colonial tradition often fail to educate people about
this. The root of all movements to break India are ultimately found in denying
the religious and cultural unity of the Indian people whether it be found in
movements inspired by colonial scholarship, communism, pan-Islamism or
evangelical Christianity.
Objection #8
I am not religious, but am a patriotic secular Indian. Why is all this
relevant today? I am uncomfortable with the idea of religion
defining our nation we are a secular country.
The idea of being `religious is ultimately a western idea. In the Indian
tradition, there were atheistic and materialistic schools of thought, like
Charvaka, all of which get lumped under `Hinduism. Obviously, if we take the
Abrahmic idea of religion, atheistic religion is absurd you cant really be a
Christian atheist or a `Muslim atheist not so long ago you would be hung
for heresy. Hinduism is a colonial term for the rich banquet of the dharmic
traditions that cannot be combined under the framework of religion. Indian
civilization is a much broader concept than narrow restrictive dogmas that
define religions.
A secular state is a system of government. We have embraced secularism
precisely because of our long civilizational history of accepting plurality of
thought and worship. This is how it must remain. However, secularism does
not define nationhood in any way. There are plenty of secular states. What is
unique about us is that we are Indians with a history of civilization rooted in
our religious and cultural ideas. That is why we are a nation today, not because
of secularism. If false notions of secularism prevent us from understanding the
roots 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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Original URL:
http://sankrant.org/2003/10/why-india-is-a-nation/
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