The question “mera Bharat kahaan?” instantly invites a counter-question: “kaunsa Bharat?” Which Bharat am I laying claim to in asking myself that question?

The oldest and most tiring cliché of contemporary political discourse, after all, is the duality between “Bharat” and “India” – Bharat, rustic, poor, and unlettered, versus the cosmopolitan, urban, English-speaking India to which the readers of this op-ed largely belong. And yet how real is that division? After all, don’t the two Indias meet all the time – for instance in politics, in cinema halls, and on the cricket field?

Above all, aren’t the two held together by a shared ‘Idea of India’? Or are there now two opposed ‘Ideas of India’ battling for India’s soul?

The idea of India – though the phrase is Tagore’s – is, in some form or another, arguably as old as antiquity itself. However, the idea of India as a modern nation based on a certain conception of human rights and citizenship, acknowledging India’s plural diversity and vigorously backed by due process of law and equality before the law, is a relatively recent and strikingly modern idea.