India’s broken dream of ‘Akhand Bharat’

The Narendra Modi regime’s aspirations of ‘Akhand Bharat’ are coming unstuck at home, and not just in J&K, but also in the North-East and in South India

Three of India’s neighbours, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh, have objected to the mural depicting ‘Akhand Bharat’ (United India) in the new parliament building. The Government of India has clarified that the map is of the ancient Ashokan Empire. The accompanying Ashokan rock edict is from Maski in Raichur, and the sculpture of Ashoka from Sannati in Kalburgi, both in Karnataka.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime, promoting antediluvian fantasies of regional dominance has, in fact, made present day India weak and divided with its citizens suspicious of each other based on religion, caste, language, and region.

The Maski rock edict is important because it associates Ashoka with the title ‘Devanampriya’ (Beloved of the Gods). It reassures the men of Jambudvipa that even a lowly person may mingle with the gods by embracing the morality of the Buddha. But clearly the aspirations of those who have placed the mural in Parliament are not to be found in preaching morality to its elected members. According to the Association for Democratic Rights, 43 percent of the current Lok Sabha and 31 percent of Rajya Sabha MPs have a criminal record. One must, therefore, look elsewhere.

Pronouncements by the ruling BJP politicians have bestowed the installation with a deeply ideological and controversial meaning. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahalad Joshi declared in a tweet (in Kannada): “The resolve is clear – Akhand Bharat.” A BJP MP representing Mumbai North-East, similarly tweeted: “Akhand Bharat in New Parliament. It represents our powerful & self-reliant India.” That map then, according to such BJP leaders, symbolises a yearning for a powerful India located in the past.

The Narendra Modi regime’s aspirations of ‘Akhand Bharat’ are, however, coming unstuck at home, and not just in Jammu and Kashmir, whose population has been divided, was locked up and patrolled in the name of unifying it with the rest of India. Even as one writes, in Manipur, fratricidal war between ethnic communities is raging and fast transforming into an even more deadly Hindus vs Christians rivalry. The long-standing ethnic divide in Manipur has never been as violent and brutal as it has become under the oversight of the BJP regime in the state and at the Centre.

A semblance of peace had been brought about in India’s North-East by previous governments signing a series of ceasefire and suspension of operations agreements with insurgent groups. The most important of these was the peace dialogue and ceasefire agreement with the Naga insurgents, the oldest and largest insurgency in the region. Due to the efforts of earlier governments, the BJP had a draft ready for a peaceful settlement when it took power in 2014. Yet the failure of the BJP to clinch a mutually-acceptable solution with the Nagas means that they remain estranged from India.

The BJP’s failure to make inroads into South India is because it stokes language and cultural divisions in the name of ‘One Nation’. Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s call for expansion of Hindi as “the only language that can unite the whole country” reopened dormant divisions along linguistic lines between Hindi and the South Indian linguistic areas. The Tamil Nadu government threatened an agitation, the Congress in Karnataka described his statements as “false propaganda”, and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen in Telangana reminded the BJP that “India is much bigger than Hindi, Hindu, Hindutva.” To undo the damage, the BJP had to organise events like Kashi-Tamil Sangamam to praise the richness of the Tamil language and culture, and the state’s historical links with North India.

Although it came to power on the slogan of co-operative federalism, the BJP has doggedly weakened the non-BJP states; dismantling their governments, buying out legislators, threatening their leadership, and making India a very unhappy union of states. Clearly, many in Team India are unhappy with the captaincy of the BJP as eight non-BJP ruled states recently chose to boycott a meeting of the governing council of the Niti Ayog chaired by the Prime Minister on the theme ‘Viksit Bharat @2047: Role of Team India’.

The religious divide between Hindus and Muslims has gone far too deep into existential issues under the BJP’s watch, pervading not just the way we view differences in worship but targeting the way certain communities dress and eat as anti-national and turning ‘Jai Sri Ram’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ into slogans of majoritarian bullying. The entire country is a tinderbox where a few social media accounts by merely using a Mughal emperor’s portrait as a display picture, triggered communal riots in Kolhapur.

Despite assiduously trying to woo the Dalits, atrocities by upper castes against the Dalits have gone up under the BJP. The National Crime Records Bureau data shows that more than 190,000 cases of crime against the Dalits were registered in India since 2018, the highest number, nearly 50,000, in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh alone. In 2021, the number of crimes committed against the Dalits were 50,900, representing a 32 percent increase from 2015. Among the Scheduled Tribes, there were 8,802 crimes registered against them in 2021, a 34 percent increase from 6,568 recorded in 2016. In Gujarat, a state ruled by the BJP for over two decades, Dalit men are still liable to be beaten up or even killed by the upper castes for riding a mare/horse or for daring to flaunt sunglasses.

India with its global power aspirations is unable to stand up to Chinese occupation in Ladakh. It cannot even resolve its border disputes with the more friendly Nepal. Displaying unprecedented diplomatic pique, India refuses any dialogue with Pakistan to resolve outstanding issues including its maritime border. Today, India is the biggest stumbling block to regional co-operation under SAARC because of its ongoing animosity with Pakistan.It is doubtful, therefore, that there is any likelihood of India increasing its regional influence merely by reimagining it as Akhand Bharat.

The BJP’s grand espousal of a globally influential India is, therefore, only a pipedream, given the deep divisions it has created at home. The people of Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh need not worry about India’s imperial dreams of regional dominance.

(Bharat Bhushan is a Delhi-based journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.