India- The country that isn't.

These are times like never before when many parts of the world, swept over by liberal ideals and the all-blending torrents of globalization question the very founding premises of intangible things like 'State', 'nation', 'people', 'patriotism' and so on. They were intangible but they were at the same time immutable, for thousands of years. Now, they seem to make a journey into the abstract and non-existent in people's reasoning.

By no means are these changes wrong or without merit. Nationalist feelings can be accused of historically and presently sprouting all kinds of nastiness in collective human behavior. But we are not going to discuss the merits and demerits of any line of political thought. We are going to examine the curious case of one particular 'country'- India.

India, or south Asia to be historically accurate, is an entity whose true nature cannot be adequately encompassed by any modern political equation, borders, laws, standards or definitions. Anyone who is acquainted well enough with its history and has become familiar to its long, unbroken line of uttered and written word, it's hoary yet cogent instances of self  recognition and textual self-attestation will quickly come to the inevitable conclusion that there are serious inaccuracies in comparing and equating it with any other post world war or Westphalian 'country'. 

In fact, the name 'India' itself fails to do justice to the phenomena lying underneath it. But let us not digress, let us understand why it is unique. And the best way to do that is to understand the rise and fall of some of the most iconic nations in history. 

1. Mesopotamia- Without a doubt, the many city states of Mesopotamia and the empires that some of them carved out in the middle east are the cynosure of all eyes in scholarly circles. Such diverse and path-breaking things as agriculture, the invention of writing, astronomy, technology, mathematics etc are readily ascribed to them by most historians.They are also considered as the worlds first empire builders. Starting with the Sumerians who spoke a language isolate and founded the cities such as Ur, Uruk and Eridu in the 4th millennium BCE, succeeded and peaked by Akkadians, and finally with the neo-Babylonian empire of the 6th century BCE. Though it had linguistic breaks and major incursions by Indo European Hittites and their cousins the Sanskrit speaking Mittani, the cultural and political entity lasted for a good 3000 years. 

But the end for Mesopotamia came in 539 BC when Cyrus the great conquered the neo-Babylonian empire from the last king Nabonidus. The culture and the Akkadian language lingered for a few more centuries, but they too inevitably died out. 

2. Egypt- There is no need to elaborate about the iconic Egypt whose pyramids are the first things that come to most people's minds when they hear the word 'ancient'. It's clout and course of history and was nearly contemporaneous and coeval with Mesopotamia. 

But just like Mesopotamia, Egypt fell to the Achaemenid Persians at the battle of Pelusium in 525 BCE; a battle which they lost in their inability to fight the Persians throwing cats at them- for cats were sacred to the Egyptians. Some Pharaohs managed to stage revolts against the Persians. Nectanebo II was the most successful of them but he too was defeated by Ataxerxes in 343 BC. Pharaonic Egypt never rose again after this defeat. It was passed hands successively from Achaemenids to Macedonians to Romans to Sassanians and finally to the invading Arabs. Between them, to know where the last vestige of ancient Egyptian culture flickered out would be nigh impossible. 

                         Paul-Marie Lenoir's paintwork, 1872, depicting the use of cats by Achaemenids against Egyptians

 3.Iranian Civilization- From the Medians were instrumental in overthrowing the neo-Assyrian empire to the Achaemenid Persians who established the largest empire the world has yet seem, to the Sassanians of the common era who were the greatest rivals of Rome, Iran has many a glorious tale to tell. But in the 7^th century, the Arabs made short, irreparable work of the once mighty superpower. It was wiped from the world map and condemned to the pages of history. Its last prince exiled and forced to live out his days as a refugee of the Chinese emperor, we hear no more of the great Parsava, Parthava and the Madra(Parthians, Persians and Medes as they are commonly known). Today the ancient culture founded by Zoroaster and proudly upheld by heroes like Vistaspa, Cyrus and Shapur survives only through the small numbers of Zoroastrians living mainly in other countries, especially India.

   US soldiers at Ctesiphon, once the capital of the Parthian and Sassanian empires

4.Greece and Rome- While there is lack of consensus about when exactly the Indo-European Proto-Greeks entered the mainland of what is now 'Greece', and while we could assume for purpose of convenience alone that it happened towards the close of the second millenium BCE, the fact that the 'Proto-Romans' or the 'Latins' usurped much what is now Italy from the Etruscans, a native European nation is knowledge common. The rise of Rome was so inescapable that even the iconic Greek city states submitted to the Roman eagle one after the other. Athens, Corinth, Thebes, the Sparta of Leonidas and even the Macedon of Alexander, all of them, sparing none. Rome played them masterfully against each other and finally in one fell swoop consumed the glory that was Greece. 

But of course, it was only a political change. Greece continued to thrive and even conquered Rome culturally. Zeus and Athena did not see the counts of their votaries wane but indeed saw them swell and the Homeric epics, Plato's philosophy and the tales and wisdom of the olden Greeks came to be the most prized by the intellectuals in and beyond the borders of Rome....

Irony indeed, that all it took for the two most deep rooted, refined and prolific cradles of ancient European identity to be rendered into mere passages in a book and pieces in a museum were a few eccentric monarchs starting with Constantine the 'great' who became the first christian emperor to Theodosius I. Between them, they razed down temples, abolished Roman and Greek cultural practices, derecognized festivals and holidays, uprooted centuries old institutions, disbanded the Vestal virgins and soon, outright banned the culture of ancient Rome and Greece.Between 430 and 450 AD, iconoclastic christian mobs personally led by 'saints' and patronised by the church and Rome laid waste to the temples of all the Greek city states and gutted even the Parthenon of Athena herself in 435 AD. Slowly and steadily, their theocratic successors all over Europe, over the next few centuries, proscribed and expunged with relentless violence all traces of the pagan cultures of the Celts, Hellenes, Slavs, Balts, Teutons and whatever other tradition that had passed by under Rome's shadow.

So there! We have seen how, one by one, the great nations of old, empires that at their peak boasted of invincibility and immortality,perished under the pitiless torrents of time. But there is one, and only one, that has defied all odds and defeated all adversity to survive even into this new millennium.

She was contemporary to the bronze age Mesopotamian states and Pharaonic Egypt. She was contemporary again to the Achaemenids, Greeks and the Macedonian Empire.Contemporary, yet again, to Rome and the Sassanians. Contemporary, mightily yet, to the Arabs and Turks at their peaks. Contemporary, even still, to the Europe of Renaissance and colonialism. And she is contemporary, even now, to this very day.

This 'awe' is not to be demeaned by calling it 'nationalism'. Indeed, only those who truly understand it will be able to aid in its defence and preservation. The challenges of this modern world are very different from that of the ancient and medieval times. But the challenges exist. And they cannot be met as long as the wider public is kept in the dark about many forgotten, yet amazing, most archaic and critical aspects about their history.

But few, even within this 'Bharatavarsh',as we fondly call it,seem to realize the significance of this. Worse, there are those who actively work to subvert the dissemination of these realizations among the general public; those who are in control of academic institutions and yet find it proper to ignore the overwhelming evidence of this cultural continuity and propagate starkly contradicting conclusions and opinions. Is it the stubbornness of the orthodoxy to change and loosen grips? Or is it agenda? It matters not.

Devasura is an attempt to contribute at least a meager part in the great effort at an 'Indian renaissance'- an effort no doubt is already beginning from multiple fronts.