One never ceases to come across learned discourses or panel discussions amongst the worthiest citizens of the country who define in their own understanding what India stands for or what being an Indian means. Every aspect of history, geography, sociology (not yet, to the best of my knowledge, genetics) is covered and one learns with respect a variety of interpretations from different angles.
What intrigues me is that somewhere along the line we never ask why the usage of the word India takes place only when such discussions or writings are in English. In no regional language, to the best of my knowledge, is that word used. Instead the common term is Bharat or Bharatvarsha, sometimes Hindustan. The Pakistan media at one time (maybe they still do ) invariably said with a twist "India that is Bharat" in all their references to this country. Yet we do not ever discuss at that high and neutral level what being ' Bharatiya' or 'Bharatbashi' could stand for. (And trying to expound on being a ' Hindi', as Iqbal wrote in his brilliant poem - "Hindi hai ham watan hai Hindustan hamara" - could be sidetracked into maverickism.) There is a sizeable portion of the population who will be uncomfortable in being put under either of the above appellations.
It has to be accepted that if we tried to expound on what Bharatiya stands for we would run into the welcome arms of people whom the elite wish to keep away from what their concept of fellow citizens is. Yet the Constitution to which we refer for final arbitration emphatically makes Hindi the official language.
When, in 1861, after the revolutionary efforts of Mazzini, Garibaldi and others, the many independent (and warring) kingdoms and principalities of the peninsula were welded together to form the country Italy that we know today, at the opening session of the Parliament of united Italy the representative from Piedmont said, "Now that we have created Italy we must learn how to be Italian!" One cannot but express disappointment at the fact that this question was not fully tackled in our constituent assembly. In the same decade Germany became a unit instead of being the land of a myriad independent units merged under one rule. Neither the Italian nor the German felt different from another fellow citizen.
About the same period, the Indian administration came directly under the British crown. A century later we rushed into a midnight tryst with destiny accepting the (partitioned) India that the British left behind, along with some 500 plus feudatory technically independent states. Through brilliant diplomacy and statesmanship, with an occasional flexing of muscles, a political unit was formed in a remarkably short period.
But the remorseless strokes of history cannot be avoided. The whole concept of nation-states is a 19th-century creation and there was no history of that for pan-India. Italians and Germans had the binding glue of language and even, with some allowances, of religion. The India that we inherited had no such common binding (save the British administration); we hoped we would give federalism full play like the United States of America but unfortunately, now in retrospect, we must accept that 16 years of a monolithic administration was a bad start in the path of federalism.
Long before we became Indian as a political unit, there was always an undefined conceptualization of the unity of India, as the Mahabharat signifies. The successive waves of invasions were very simply digested without attempting to define that unity. Even a poet who would turn communal in his later years could write in the 20th century, "Mazhab nahi sikhata aapas mein bair rakhna (religion does not teach us to bear enmity towards one another)," which may ring hollow today.
I have no problem with my own Indianness, which I would proudly define in terms of the entire rendering of Tagore's famous poem/song, 'Bharat Tirtha' ( "He more chitta punya tirthay jago re dhire"). I sincerely believe that the poem should be translated into every regional language and compulsorily read in every school run by whichever government or religious denomination. Along with that we must support every sensible move towards a truly federal structure in administration.
