India was never in its history a unified entity. Even its name India was coined after the Sindhu aka Indus River, who the Greeks referred to as “Indos”. India’s original name was Bharat, even today many Indians more out of bigotry, prejudice and bias refer to their country as “Bharat”; the word is a derivative from the name of the ancient tribe that inhabited some areas of India, called “Bharata”.

The Persians had named their Eastern neighbour as “Hindustan”. Later, the Britishers recognising that Hindustan had an implicit meaning, as the land of Hindus, decided to do away with this narrow association to a single religion that had peacefully coexisted with so many other religions; Islam being the predominant of them. Hindustan became India for Britain.

Till about the beginning of the 19th century, most of India was divided into individual principalities and distinctly different empires. From Maharajas to Nizams. The 1757 Battle of Plassey changed the course of the history of India. Through the betrayal by one traitor, Sirajuddula lost to Robert Clive. Most fiefdoms thereafter without any military engagement surrendered to become part of the Indian Union.

Until the arrival of the British to the court of Emperor Jehangir, the “spice merchants” of King James I, led by Sir Thomas Roe, who sought to promote trade with India, the region then was largely diverse with numerous kingdoms and empires.

No ruler, inclusive of the Mauriyas, Guptas or the Mughal emperors were able to consolidate the region into a single nation in modern sense of our understanding today of what nation state means. So in reality, the concept of Akhand Bharat has been an illusionary absurdity. A deception of the narrow-minded.

The divide........

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