The myth of Akhand Bharat

Original blog at The myth of Akhand Bharat

One upon a time there was a very good lecturer in political science department. I heard him few times. He gave me quite a few shocks. Here I’m thinking on one of them.
The statement he made was “India as the political unit you observe today never existed before British rule”. It frankly made my blood boil and I couldn’t agree with him. India? It has been a country ever since. But as I grew older I knew some new facts. I could now put lot of facts together and think carefully.
Remember Tippu Sultan? Do you know who his opponents were in the last battle which proved his end? No, it wasn’t British only. It was the combined front of British, Nizam and Marathas. Other political kingdoms along with British brought the end of Tippu.
Once I heard a person from north east saying that even Aurangzeb couldn’t conquer our territory. I checked the history (how blissfully aware we happen to be about history of north east?) and found it true. No earlier kingdom from west has ruled over north-east region. The closest came Maurya Empire, they ruled only a small part of north-east India. (As a side note: we in Gujarat know only that there is some form of terrorism in that part of India. But how many of us really know the background? How much we know of their history which made them to take weapons?)
Let’s go little back in history. We kept reading in our history books that this attacker came from Khyber Ghat and invaded India. Once Gunvant Shah made a statement, “if all the attackers came through Khyber Ghat, why Indian kings didn’t didn’t build a wall like great wall of china to keep invaders out?” He meant well. But frankly speaking he doesn’t know history. There was no single or one kingdom in India at that time. There were states. Kingdoms. And they kept fighting with each other. I read that when sultan of Delhi mounted the offensive against Malawi, the neighboring states Gujarat (remember Ray Karan ghelo?) and marwad/mewad kept quiet. Later the sultan came for Gujarat and marwad/mewad gave him free passage. Finally Marwad/Mewad got conquered and amalgamated in the Delhi sultanate. The only thing I want to bring to reader’s notice is that there existed separate political entities that kept fighting with each other.
I heard someone asking, “why it is that history of Gujarat starts from Muslim rule?” but I remember studying something different in our Gujarati history books. In our history books the history of Gujarat starts from Vanraj Chavda who freed Gujarat from foreign (?) rule. It is believed that this foreign ruler was from south. Why would it be called freeing Gujarat? From foreign rulers, if all Indians are part of same country? But clearly, such a thing didn’t exist in those times. Gujarat was a different political entity and it viewed any rule from south or from Malawi as enslaving.
Some might say well Harshavardhan’s empire was very big and India was one in his time. Wrong!!! Most of the south India was under equally powerful Chalukya Empire. Actually Pulkeshi defeated Harshavardhan.
Well, we can agree that Maurya kingdom was bigger. But still it didn’t encompass whole India as we know today. Cholas and Pandyas had their own kingdoms in south. And as said before, most of the north east wasn’t part of their kingdom.
So my reader-biradar, if someone shows a map of Akhand Bharat which includes present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka, use your knowledge of history and ask the person when was such an Akhand Bharat existed? (I’ve myself seen such map at so-and-so organization’s meeting). Such an Akhand Bharat existed only under British rule. Such organizations just want to grab what others (British) won with their own power and cleverness. They paint the events of partition in 1947 as something so very tragic which torn the “nation” apart into two!!! But let’s face the facts if we can. British put the nation called India together from myriad number of political entities and they split it into two.
Now some people will say we should be patriotic and love India. Nothing wrong in that. I am patriotic, but I don’t want to base my patriotism on false understanding of past.

I welcome healthy discussion on this issue. Let me know if there is any historical error in what I said. I’ll go through sources again if need be.