In 1974, at the end of a three-hour long talk given by me to a civil society gathering in Madison, Wisconsin, I was asked a truly profound, if troubling, question:

“Sir, keeping in mind the incredible diversities of cultural identity and expression in India straddling myriads of languages, castes, religious faiths, colours of skin, economic classes, gender divides, how might I find a true Indian were I to visit there?”

Unanswerable as the question was, I came up with a formulation that may, with apologies, indeed still be the only valid one.

I heard myself say: “whoever in India, regardless of all the diversity, says two things to you, know that you have found your true Indian:

• one, whatever be the issue at hand, ‘I know, I know’;
• and two, whatever be the merits of a case in hand, ‘not my fault’.

That was then.

It is to the credit of the governance over the last decade or more that we now can draw up a detailed catechism that must define “a true Indian.”

So, here’s a bare sketch, that needs constantly to be pressed home and consolidated by custodians of truth if citizens are to be prevented from asserting fake diversities and undesirable pluralities:

Any “true Indian” must hold these articles of faith as supreme, overriding all other inauthentic catechisms, including the Constitution of India:

—that Prajapati created Bharat as Vishwaguru;

—that Bharat’s unique and providential birth was testified to by golden birds who crowded the branches of trees, by milk and honey that copiously ran down her rivers and cataracts;

—that by the epical evidence Bharat had knowledge of flying aircraft, of plastic surgery, of distant, digital viewing et al long millennia before western nations had their birth;

—that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages, and Arabic and Latin liturgies only bowdlerised corruptions of the same;

—that being Hindu does not mean being religious, but being the only human species held in reverence by the gods;

—that the Partition of India was a Gandhian conspiracy, abetted by Nehru;

—that Shyama Prasad Mukerje, not Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah, was responsible for the accession of Kashmir to India;

—that Nehru was actually Muslim;

—that all battles before Operation Sindoor, i.e. Kashmir 1947-8, 1965, 1999, Goa 1962, East Pakistan 1971 etc- were not won but actually lost by India, and because of Nehru’s indifference to the army;

—that no cruelties or internecine betrayals were ever committed by home-grown Kings and Princes, but only by the Sultans and the Mughals;

—that women committed Sati not by social coercion driven by patriarchal lust for property but because a divine fire within called them to sanctify their marriages to the profane world;

—that the making of the secular Constitution was a deep-rooted anti-Sanatan, pro-Muslim conspiracy wrought upon a civilizational and ahistorical land by slaves of the wicked West;

—that what matters in good governance is not the credibility of institutions, the provable soundness of official data where it does exist, the accountability of leaders to “we the people” and to a non-discriminatory rule of law, but the shasvat (truthful by divine sanction) word of the supremo whose birth has been non-biological;

—that free expression granted by the secular constitution must at all times remain subservient to the needs of government;

–that government equals nation;

—that the government, if led by Sanatan, must remain above and beyond constitutional or any other form of citizen-driven questioning;

—that such questioning must be deemed incontestable proof of treasonous proclivities funded by the likes of George Soros etc

—that investigating agencies are meant primarily to collar those who oppose the government;

—that in fact it is mere propaganda that the 60% electorate who are represented by the political opposition are genuine Indians;

—that this percentage is in fact made up of Bangladeshis, Rohingyas, and sundry other species of Mussalmans, although there may be no proof of this;

—that “a true Indian” must at all times believe that the entire world sings praises of Sanatan, that no country supports Pakistan, that all encounters are always genuine;

—that the Media has been for long decades misled by the pretence that the constitution requires it to watch over executive excess when in fact the Media in a Sanatan nation can only be true if it never tires of packing facts and events in Sanatan capsules;

—that the supreme leader of the nation has no call to interact with the Media, or take queries form parliamentarians, or to attend parliament;

—that the supreme leader is supreme because it is his call only to lecture the nation on any subject under the sun in a one-sided social contract, and to be broadcast by all channels, or else;

—that no “true Indian” may believe that the citizens’ right to peaceful assembly and collective protest is absolute; unlike the plethora of yatras taken out by “true Sanatan Bharatis.”

And so forth.

It will be up to the cyber cell of the powers-that-be to formulate the aforesaid catechism into a capsule that can be readily administered to citizens – after due verification of their credentials, of course.

Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here.

---

---