Introduction
One of the oft-repeated
urban myths that sometimes pops-up in conversation even among many educated,
well meaning Indians is that India as a nation is a British creation. The
argument goes roughly as follows – India is an artificial entity. There are
only a few periods in history when it was unified under the same political
entity. It was only the British that created the idea of India as a single
nation and unified it into a political state. A related assumption, in our
minds, is that the developed Western countries have a comparatively far greater
continuity of nationhood, and legitimacy as states, than India.
This urban myth is not
accidental. It was deliberately taught in the British established system of
education. John Strachey, writing in `India: Its Administration and Progress’
in 1888, said “This is the first and most essential thing to remember about
India – that there is not and never was an India, possessing … any sort of
unity, physical, political, social or religious; no Indian nation.
