There is emotion in the Akhand Bharat slogan, or in a map showing the vivisection of Mother India. Such a map can excite some super-patriots, frighten other Indians, and evoke nostalgia.
Analyse the nostalgia, however, and you quickly find that what is sought to be recovered is the Akhand Bharat first created by the Mughals and later consolidated by the British. For it is only the Hindostan of the Mughals, or the prized ‘Ind’ of the British, to which Akhand Bharat approximates.
India is ancient, Indian civilisation is ancient. No honest mind can dispute that. The Chinese, the Egyptians, the Iraqis, the Mexicans, and others too may tell themselves similar things, but that does not cancel Indian satisfaction.
It seems, moreover, that centuries before Babur arrived in 1526 and dislodged the Lodhis, Indian minds harboured the sense of a common land, an entity the future would call India, Bharat, Hind, Hindustan, or whatever.
Pilgrims journeyed to sacred places in the extremities of this land, all of which seemed to possess, in the eyes of these pilgrims, similar elements, whether physical, climatic, or cultural.
Not long before the start of the Common Era, Greeks marched into this space. Later, in the first millennium of this era, a string of venturesome…
