The civilisational beliefs have echoed in the course of history as more stringent factors above the geopolitical realities. In particular, the geopolitical trajectories are begotten from certain civilisational or cultural elements rooted in the regions.
For instance, Russia’s distinctiveness as an Orthodox civilisation and its threat perception towards the West reflects Russia’s otherness, which has derived from the Orthodox monk Fillofi’s idea of depicting Moscow as the “Third Rome”. The gravity of this belief has lasted bolstering the Russian psyche. Civilisational values are not antithetical to the South Asian context in which cultures, societies and masses have been nourished under great religious traditions that emanated from the Indic civilisation.
The mural, installed in the newly opened parliament building in New Delhi seems to have caused a stir in the South Asian neighbourhood as it represents the subcontinent covering Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and finally Sri Lanka. Shortly after the Indian Premier opened India’s New Parliamentary Complex built at a cost of US$ 2.4 billion, the depiction of Indian map in the mural known as “Akhand Bharat” became a hot topic for many journalists and analysts to speculate various narratives.
The idea of Akhand Bharat goes back to the times of Chanakya, the famous Indian politician, strategist and writer in 350 BC‐283 BC. Chanakya, also known as Vishnugupta or Kautilya, was the Prime Minister to the first Maurya Emperor Chandragupta (340-293 BC). In his pursuit of building a strong and thriving India, Chanakya was the first person to float the idea of the first Indian empire or Akhand Bharat.
This idea of Akhand Bharat is as old as the ‘civilisation’ spread over the area that constitutes present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Burma, Tibet, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. In recent times, the idea has found a place in the ideology of ‘Hindutva’ peddled by V D Savarkar. He believed that to be a Hindu, it was important that one inhabits the land from the ‘Indus to the seas’ and below the Himalayas “so strongly entrenched that no country in the world is more closely marked out by the fingers of nature as a geographical unit.”
This ‘Hindutva’ ideology also deemed this land as the Hindu holy land, and, therefore, rejected Muslims and Christians contending that their holy land is somewhere else instead of the geographical unit marked by Savarkar. This idea of Hindu land was adopted by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and, in fact, Nathuram Godse, a member of RSS and mentored by Savarkar, had assassinated Mahatma Gandhi for alleged ‘vivisection’ of India.
Civilisational idea
Hence, it is beyond any doubt that the idea of Akhand Bharat has always captivated the minds of the Indian political elite, particularly those belonging to far-right groups and organisations such as RSS and its political wing – the BJP – which is currently at the helms of affairs in India. It was precisely for this reason that when the mural of Akhand Bharat appeared in India’s newly inaugurated parliament building, there was a wave of anger and opposition in the neighbouring countries. But, the truth lies behind this hullabaloo and stands for civilisational ethos, which goes beyond the so-called “Indian expansionism”, because in truth the creation of India as a nation-state owes its debt to British colonialism. Nonetheless, the grandeur of Indic space and its related civility is more archaic, which dates back to the Indus Valley civilisation and beyond.
It is important to understand that there was no monolithic state of India throughout its history as it always remained fragmented or complex devoid of unitary status. However, the spirit of its civilisation, virtues and value system continued to aspire to and vitalise the people, which resulted in making a common legacy from the Hindukush to Coumarone. Notwithstanding the efforts made by many historians and nationalists to distinguish Sri Lanka completely from India’s orbit, Sri Lanka has kept its tryst with Indic space as an undeniable reality.
In all three instances, in which rulers tried to unify India as a single entity, two of the powers namely Asoka in the Mauryan empire and Akbar the greatest ruler from the Mughals approached their people by generating a sense of shared destiny. In Asoka’s diplomacy, the greater projection of Indic space was accomplished by his total transformation from Dig Vijaya to Dharma Vijaya, which brought massive success to the Mauryan empire. Akbar strived to realise this by disrupting the religious and ethnic divisions that existed in the Mughal administration.
Nehruvian perspective
In the wake of independence, national rejuvenation emerged within the strategic thinking of India often referred to the idea of “Akhand Bharat”, which will finally elevate the status of India into a global power after centuries of serfdom under colonialism. In the 1930’s, Parrikar advocated for the confederation of India embodying the idea of Akhand Bharat.
Although Parrikar refrained from using the term “Akhand Bharat”, he did not forget to mention how Sri Lanka would be indispensable for the protection of India as its strategic location in the Indian Ocean closer to the Indian mainland.
However, the Indian nationalist movement prospered under Nehru and Gandhi made no such attempts to cause paranoia in Sri Lankan leaders who had a sceptical attitude towards India. However, after the independence, India’s first premier Jawaharlal Nehru did not harbour any hard feelings towards Sri Lankan politicians and Nehru’s perspective was manifest at the Asian Relations Conference in March-April 1947 when he reckoned Sri Lanka as one of the new architects of resurgent Asia.
Even though Nehru was not in favour of the kind of government that came to power in Sri Lanka, he opened his fullest cooperation for Colombo. There was not the slightest sign of Indian expansionism from Nehru throughout his political career except for his committed vision towards non-alignment and the unity of Asia. He abhorred expansionism saying “India wants to do away with the imperialist notion of capturing and exploiting another country. I do not want Indians to go to a place where they are not wanted”.
On the whole, the depiction of “Akhand Bharat” unveiled in the mural placed in the Indian parliament is not an aggrandisement of Indian dominance over its neighbours.
On the contrary, it is much akin to apotheosising an idea which has lingered in the people of the Indic space for thousands of years based on shared cultural and spiritual norms. Thus, the projection of “Akhand Bharat” from New Delhi is nothing more than an effort in perpetuating a civilisational idea.
The writer is a lecturer at the Faulty of Law, General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University
