India’s neighbors were outraged. The new parliament which was inaugurated in New Delhi with great fanfare by Narendra Modi, on May 28, displays within the building a map of India, in the form of a fresco mural, including some or all of their districts. It is a representation of Akhand Bharat, which means “India Separated”, the longtime dream of Hindu nationalists – of which the Prime Minister is the deputy –, to create a nation that stretches from Afghanistan, on the western side of India, to Burma in the east, encompassing Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The area resembles the contours of the old British Empire, but to Hindu nationalists it corresponds to a larger Indian fantasy period founded on Hindu influence.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch lashed out “a manifestation of a revisionist and expansionist mindset that seeks to subjugate the ideology and culture of not only India’s neighbors but also its religious minorities”. Nepal’s prime minister, who recently paid an official visit to New Delhi, did not react, but his predecessor, KP Sharma Oli, was moved to see his country integrated into India’s borders. “If a country like India, which considers itself an old and strong country and a model democracy, puts the Nepal region on its map and hangs it in Parliament, we cannot talk about justice”, did he state. Bangladesh asked New Delhi to clarify the situation.
The Government of India is content to reply, through a spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, that the mural is “represents the expansion of the ancient Mauryan empire”, between 321 and 185 BC, where Emperor Ashoka reigned, and symbolized “the idea of responsible and people-oriented government”.
“Strong act of revisionism”
This imperialist vision of national geography is at the heart of Hindutva, the ideology propagated by Indian nationalists whose aim was to create a Hindu state, to mend the rift the British had broken in 1947 with the creation of Pakistan. and to restore a hegemonic Hindu India. Regularly, Hindu nationalists promise that India will find its old frontiers. In April, for example, Mohan Bhagwat, head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the flagship organization of the nationalist galaxy, stated that Akhand Bharat Formerly “the undeniable truth and that divided Bharat is a nightmare”. He had assured that one day the separated halves would be reunited.
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