Not long ago, there was a write up in one of Chinese publications in which the writer claimed that India, although loosely unified by a common religion and culture, is a union of historically disintegrated territories with multiple languages, customs and habits. The author, therefore, concluded that the Indian union could be conquered without wasting much resource by deliberately sowing seeds of division, rivalry and disintegration. The author’s contention, although wicked, is not too far from truth. Civilized people in great nations like China don’t make such far fetched analysis, which tantamount to defeat the civility among the comity of nations. However, the intelligentsia in China does not seem to have given much thought to it. In India that article created a lot of hue and cry. Some claimed that it appeared in one of the official publications of the Peoples’ Republic of China and that it should be considered as the official view of that nation. Novice journalists and Naïve people wrote many comments in that context. I thought that those thoughts came from a juvenile mind of a biologically grown man. I hope my faith in the Chinese intelligentsia and its government is not out of place.

Today I read a report in the Indian Express in which a seemingly important man made a statement somewhere that“Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet, Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka once formed ‘Akhand Bharat’” and “recent research findings on DNA mapping have established that the inhabitants of this sub-continent in the last 40,000 years have had similar DNA,” etc. It may be fun for some one to hear that kind of far fetched statement, if one has no idea about of the geography, history, politics, international relations etc. about the world in which we live in and for one who believes in everything that has been told to one. However, one concerned with the current and future well being of the Indian nation and of the survival of people who live by the teachings loosely described as Hindu philosophy is quite worried of the implications of such a statement because that statement comes from the top leader of an organization considered to be the torchbearer of Hindu identity. Indian media has a habit of misquoting Hindu leaders and parties which associate with Hindu philosophy. I hope the statement attributed to Dr. Mohan Bhagwat was misquoted and misinterpreted as usual.