September 3, 2039 will be a special day in my life if I live that long when I celebrate Sahastra Chandra Darshan i.e. having lived long enough to see 1,000 Full moon days. As a devout Hindu, I have a dream of celebrating this special day with my near and dear ones on the bank of Sindhu and thereafter attend a Vipassana camp nearby from where I can see the river that fed my  ancient civilization, flow peacefully along.

This is the Bharat that Bhagat Singh laid down his life for. It is this Bharat for which  Subhas Chandra Bose led the Indian National Army. It is this Bharat for which Vinayak Damodar Savarkar went to Kala Pani at Andaman. It was he who gave the most beautiful definition of Secularism that I have ever come across. ‘ Lord Ram is heart of Bharat and in as much as different colours of rainbow make it more beautiful, different religions of Bharat such as Zoroastrians, Christians, Moslems, Jews add to beauty of the Bharatiya society”

The independent Bharat that these heros dreamt of stretched from the banks of Sindu in the West to Brahmaputra in the East, guarded by the Himalayas in the north and the Indian ocean in the South at Kanyakumari.

To them, considering someone from Dhaka, Kabul or Lahore as an infiltrator would have been incomprehensible. Savarkar did have the misfortune of seeing bloody partition of Akhand Bharat but Bose and Bhagat Singh went to meet their Maker with their dream intact. What can be more absurd than that those who profess to believe in the dream of Akhand Bharat should consider people fed by the holy river of Sindhu on the banks of which the Vedas were written and which is as inseparable from Hindu consciousness as heart is from brain; as their permanent enemies.

This is not to wish away the deeply divisive events that have shaped the fate of Indian Sub-continent in last 75 years. That unfortunate reality exists and has to be dealt with. But in order to do so, can we forget the source of our civilization of thousands of  years? Give up forever the dream of drinking the waters of Sindhu once again – not as visitors, not as conquerors but as guests in the house of our brothers and sisters, who prefer to cook their food in a different kitchen?

If Akhand Bharat is a dream of imposing hegemony of one set of people on another from Sindhu to Brahamaputra,  as Ashok or later Aurangzeb did, then it is a dream that will and should remain a mirage forever. If it is a dream where different sovereign nations co-exist with common border control, currency and market for products and services, then it is a dream that ought to be realized and can be realized in our lifetime – even that of young Senior citizens like me. 

A mere hundred years ago, any suggestion that France and Germany will share such relations would have been dismissed as a crank pot idea. But that today is the reality. In 1920 who would have thought that Delhi and Lahore would be ready to obliterate each other at the press of a nuclear button but that again is the reality today. Is it not obvious which of the two reality needs to be changed?  But where does one make a start? For a start, let us welcome anyone who comes from Kabul, Karachi or Dhaka and is prepared to swear by Bharatiya Flag, Constitution and is willing to join us in singing our national song Vande Mataram with open arms and provided they agree to not indulge in any activity of religious conversion in their lifetime. It does not matter whether she is Hindu, Muslim or Christian or even whether she is persecuted or not. Let us not be stuck in inferiority complex and fear that these new comers will swap our culture and treat them as infiltrators. Let us have confidence in ourselves and believe that we can and will change them so that it is these new comers, who will be at the vanguard of the peaceful revolution to take us to the banks of Sindhu once again.

Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 takes us away from the banks of Sindhu. By this act we refuse to allow Muslims from other parts of Akhand Bharat to overcome the folly of their forefathers in 1947. For all its faults, our country did something right. It took 70 years for Bharatiya Muslim Women to take to streets holding afloat the national flag and constitution; exercising their constitutional right of peaceful protest. Let us cherish the dream of naturalized Bharatiya Muslim Women from Karachi, Kabul and Dhaka precipitating such protests in their former countries and thereby leading us once again to the banks of Sindhu.

To make this sentiment more widespread, Abhinav Bharat Congress will hold a Seminar on “Sindhutva” on the bank of Sindhu, near Leh on May 28, 2020, the 127th birth anniversary of Veer Savarkar. Those who are interested may contact us.

Dr. Pankaj K Phadnis, Ph.D.