I love how Indians think of India;
how they inherit it like mythology,
fully formed,
umbilical cord still tied to the Indus Valley Civilization,
as if geography were a womb
and not an accident.
How history, conveniently,
begins where kingdoms do,
as if land needed a crown
to exist.
Not discovered,
just an immaculate conception,
like its hundred thousand gods.
Because “discovery” would imply
it was already there,
indifferent,
unbaptized by ambition.
So no,
not discovery.
Invention.
A retrospective authorship
signed in the names of kings
who never signed the same map.
I love how convenient ignorance
nonchalantly looks aside
when it comes to truths,
like how
India became India
only when the East India Company
needed a word
large enough
to invoice an entire subcontinent.
Before that,
all it ever was —
fragments with egos:
Marathas,
Rajputs,
Sultanates;
kingdoms that fought each other
with more consistency
than they ever fought an “invader.”
Too many sovereignties
to be reduced
into a single pronoun.
And yet,
we speak of unity
in hindsight,
like historians
with editing privileges.
I love how invasions are narrated
as theological disagreements.
As if the Mughal Empire,
the Portuguese,
the French,
and every other flag
arrived here
to correct how we kneel.
Not to extract.
Not to own.
Just overwrite faith.
I love how kingdoms and countries,
dynasties and democracies,
are shuffled together
like synonyms,
as if power doesn’t change
just because its costume does.
I love how patriotism
arrives before the nation,
how loyalty is demanded
retroactively,
like tax.
How blindfolds are branded
as culture.
How obedience is renamed
as pride.
How slavery,
with enough rephrasing,
earns itself a flag.
And I love,
more than anything,
how the idea of India,
to an Indian,
isn’t memory,
or history,
or even delusion,
but a carefully curated hallucination
where contradictions don’t conflict;
they pass for truth,
because nobody insists
on noticing the difference.
The silence
in the gouged out eyes of disagreement,
it’s easy to call that unity.
And united we are,
as siblings in a family crime;
not because we agree,
but because we’ve learned
disagreement
is bad for inheritance.
Now, repeat after me,
“India is my country
and all Indians are my brothers and sisters.”
Say it slowly.
Feel how easily
belonging
settles into your mouth
like something rehearsed.
And notice,
how it survives
by making disagreement
feel like betrayal.
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