By Sardar Khan Niazi
Pakistan has voiced its concerns over the idea of Akhand Bharat (unified India) being increasingly peddled by the ruling Indian dispensation. The revival of the Akhand Bharat issue may adversely affect relations between India and Pakistan.
Speaking at her weekly news briefing, Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said that a mural installed at the new parliament building in New Delhi depicts the so-called ancient India including areas that now constitute parts of Pakistan and other regional countries.
“We are appalled at the statements being made by some BJP politicians including the Union Minister linking the mural with Akhand Bharat. This assertion is a manifestation of the expansionist mindset that seeks to subjugate the ideology and culture not only of India’s neighbors but also its religious minorities,” she added.
The spokesperson advised the Indian politicians not to indulge in rhetoric against other countries, merely to further their divisive and parochial political agenda. She said instead of nurturing hegemonic and expansionist designs, India should resolve disputes with its neighbors for a peaceful and prosperous South Asia.
A Dawn editorial after the Goa operation in 1961 said that Pakistan faces exactly the same danger as Goa did, and as soon as India feels strong enough to do so she will try to wipe out Pakistan. Because Indians in their heart of hearts still regard the areas, now forming Pakistan as parts of Akhand Bharat over which someday Hindu rule must extend.
Six years later, in his autobiography, Friends Not Masters, Ayub Khan argued that it was India’s “ambition to absorb Pakistan or turn her into a satellite”.
Akhand Bharat is one of the mainstays of Hindu nationalism. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh passed many resolutions that showed its attachment to this core issue. The Bharatiya Jana Sangh (abbreviated as BJS or JS, short name: Jan Sangh, was an Indian right-wing political party that existed from 1951 to 1977 and was the political arm of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist volunteer organization.
In 1953, its all-India general council declared, “We, therefore, reaffirm our faith in one and united India and pledge ourselves to renewed efforts for the fulfillment of this ideal of Akhand Bharat”. In 1965, the same body expressed its hope that one day “India and Pakistan will be united to form Akhand Bharat”.
This notion harks back to a specific view of the territory of India. While most students of Hindu nationalism have focused on its proponents’ emphasis on the figure of Bharat Mata, this metaphor of the body of the nation has obscured the key role of land in the ideology of Hindutva.
V.D. Savarkar developed the Hindu nationalist political ideology of Hindutva while imprisoned at Ratnagiri in 1922. He was a leading figure in the Hindu Mahasabha. For him, a Hindu inhabits the land from the Indus to the seas and below the Himalayas. “
However, India is not only a geographical unit for Savarkar, but also the Hindu holy land, whose sacredness is testified to by the cult of the rivers and mountains where pilgrims worship their gods. Therefore, India is not only the motherland or fatherland but also the holy land of Hindus.
Hence Savarkar’s distinction between Hindus on the one hand, and Muslims and Christians on the other. For though Hindustan to them is fatherland as to any other Hindu, it is not to them a holy land too.
This mystique of the national land was further enhanced after partition. Nathuram Godse decided to kill Mahatma Gandhi because he held him responsible for “the cursed vivisection of India”. Just before being hanged, he and Narayan Apte shouted “Akhand Bharat amar rahe!”
