Out of my mind: It is democracy that unites India | The Indian Express

Out of my mind: It is democracy that unites India | The Indian Express

Written by Meghnad Desai |Updated: June 30, 2019 12:50:27 am

Meghnad Desai loves to cook, watch and write about old Bollywood movies and shuttles between London, Delhi and Goa. He pursues controversies on economics, history and anything else which catches his attention. He is also a British parliamentarian sitting in the House of Lords. He has written over 25 books, over 200 articles in learned journals and hundreds of newspaper columns in UK and India.

Out of my mind: It is democracy that unites India

The first person to rule over all India (excluding what became Pakistan) was Dr Rajendra Prasad. India had to become a sovereign democratic republic to achieve a single geographical shape.

Hindu identity was sought by many great leaders, starting with Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Swami Vivekanand and of course, in his own way, Mahatma Gandhi. Yet again these ideas were mainly confined to the North. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

It is a constant of Indian history since time immemorial. India never had a central empire which covered the entire subcontinent as China had through its history. In India there were occasionally large regional empires, mainly in the Doab region. But never the South or the Northeast. Most empires broke up into small principalities after lasting a century at most.