What survives is not the plural soul of Bharat but a hollow India where
debate is silenced, dissent criminalised, and history rewritten.
History has a cruel sense of humour. A land that once debated metaphysics
under banyan trees now argues over WhatsApp forwards. A civilisation that
produced Ashoka’s edicts, Buddha’s sermons, Kabir’s dohas, and Akbar’s
dialogues now finds its leaders distributing history lessons via television
anchors who confuse mythology with policy. Welcome to India of the RSS, loud,
insecure, and allergic to the very idea of Bharat.
When Bharat Still Breathed
Bharat was never a flat, monochrome canvas. Ashoka, after the carnage of
Kalinga, turned from conquest to Dhamma, carving in stone his call for
tolerance and compassion.
Ashoka engraved tolerance on stone, today’s rulers engrave vengeance in
concrete.
Bimbisara welcomed Buddha and Mahavira alike. The Chalukyas and Pallavas
encouraged Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil together, nurturing multiple streams of
faith and philosophy. The Upanishads declared Ekam Sat, Vipra Bahudha
Vadanti — truth is one, the wise speak of it in many ways. Compare that
with today’s rulers who thunder that truth is one and it must be spoken only in
their language, preferably in a Sanskritised Hindi that feels more imposed than
inspired.
Encounters and Synthesis
The slave dynasties, Delhi Sultans, and later the Mughals brought conquest.
But Bharat did not dissolve. It absorbed, debated, and created synthesis. Akbar
invited pandits, ulema, Jesuit priests, and Zoroastrians to one table. His
experiment was about coexistence, not control.
Bhakti and Sufi saints became bridges, their verses mocking hollow ritual
and affirming love. Kabir stood in the bazaar and prayed for everyone. Today
the same bazaar is flooded with trolls praying for lynchings in the name of
nationalism. Bharat conversed with the other, India under the RSS cannot
tolerate a question.
The Colonial Turn
The British shattered India not just economically but intellectually. They
codified caste, hardened religious identities, and invented the arithmetic of
majority and minority. Yet even in that fractured time, Bharat’s spirit fought
back.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy challenged superstition, Vivekananda spoke of universal
humanity, Gandhi weaponised non-violence, Ambedkar wrote a Constitution that
enshrined liberty, equality, and fraternity. The freedom movement united
Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, atheists, feminists, and peasants.
And what was the RSS doing? It sat out of the freedom struggle, whispered
admiration for Mussolini and Hitler, and sneered at the tricolour. It inherited
not Ashoka’s Dhamma or Gandhi’s satyagraha, but an imported cult of uniformity.
While Gandhi spun the charkha, the RSS spun excuses.
India That Is Not Bharat
Fast forward to today. The RSS claims to be the custodian of Indian
culture. But their India is not Bharat. It is a hollow brand project packaged
in saffron and sold through IT cells.
Universities that once stood for dissent are now laboratories of
ideological policing. The New Education Policy does not liberate minds, it
standardises obedience. History is no longer taught, it is airbrushed. Mughals
vanish, Ambedkar is diluted, Gandhi is shrunk, Savarkar is inflated. Even
Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, a literary classic on Partition, is refashioned
to suit propaganda. Theatre, cinema, literature — everything must now pass a
loyalty test.
Bharat gave the world depth, RSS gives the world theatricality.
Language is weaponised. Bharat once embraced Tamil, Odia, Kannada, Urdu,
Persian, and countless dialects. Today’s rulers push Sanskritised Hindi as the
only marker of nationalism. The result is not unity but linguistic indigestion.
Religion, once a field of philosophy and questioning, is reduced to
hashtags and mob justice. Saints who challenged power are replaced by
media-savvy godmen who bless bulldozers and endorse politicians.
The Theatre of Present Affairs
Today’s headlines would be comic if they were not tragic.
Manipur burns, communities are displaced, yet Delhi remains silent for
months. Bulldozer justice demolishes homes before courts can hear cases. The
Enforcement Directorate and CBI, once institutions of law, are now instruments
of intimidation. Opposition leaders are raided at dawn, defectors rewarded by
dusk.
Media houses act as extensions of the ruling party’s messaging. Anchors
roar on cue, debates resemble battlefields, and journalism has become a
televised loyalty parade.
Unemployment soars, farmers’ protests are ignored, and yet there is time to
rename cities, rewrite textbooks, and police dinner plates. The National
Education Policy is paraded as reform while many academics feel pushed out by
ideology. The Constitution, a modern Upanishad, is being hollowed out in
spirit. Fraternity has been replaced by frenzy, secularism by sloganeering,
equality by exclusion.
In Bharat knowledge was debated, in India news is shouted.
Reclaiming Bharat
The tragedy is clear. India may survive on the map, but Bharat suffocates.
Bharat was Ashoka’s remorse, Akbar’s conversation, Kabir’s defiance, Gandhi’s
satyagraha, Ambedkar’s law. India today is WhatsApp misinformation, bulldozer
justice, and troll armies on payroll. Bharat was plural, India is paranoid.
Bharat was confident, India is insecure. Bharat was wise, India is loud.
Reclaiming Bharat does not mean resurrecting empires or mythological
fantasies. It means protecting plurality against uniformity, debate against
dogma, and conscience against coercion. It means remembering that Bharat
survived centuries of conquest and colonialism not by exclusion but by
absorption.
If we fail, the loss will be greater than any foreign conquest. This time
the coloniser is homegrown, garbed in saffron, and cheered by studios and
timelines. Bharat is not dead yet, but it gasps under the weight of India. The
question is, do we have the courage to reclaim it.
Author’s Introduction
Siddhartha Shankar Mishra is an Advocate at the Supreme Court of India. He
writes on law, society, and the ideological challenges confronting Indian
democracy. He can be reached at ssmishra33@gmail.com
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