The contention that India never existed as a historical entity is lamentable misreading of history,this take on history is myopic in its outlook,because it generates the vision of a nationhood in its geographical,social and cultural isolation.The idea of Indian as nation,like any other nation, is a historical and ideological construct.This construction of Indian nationhood was not begun today,yesterday or in the centuries bygone,its a perpetual exercise whose foundation is the very foundation of our civilization and we,the India of today,are not the sum total of this exercise,but merely a recent appendage in the grand old narrative.
Even a short perusal of the history of the Indian nationalist movement of the late 19th and 20th century will tells us how our vision of sovereign nationhood can be traced back to the history of a different age.The Indian nationalist movement is often to referred to as the nations political response to its failed military venture,i.e the war of 1857-58, to evict the alien colonialists.The 1857 uprising itself,taking to considerations the broad sweep of the geographical and political centers of the uprising,was a last ditch effort by the Maratha political leadership to reverse their political fortunes which had been so brutally crushed during the third Anglo-Maratha war of 1818.Some historians have gone so far as to call the 1857 revolt a 'fourth Anglo-Maratha war.
So when the Indian national congress were being held in Pune and Bombay and the chants of self rule or 'Swarajya' was being bandied about,its political-historical connotation was not lost on the British rulers and the Indian nationalist.The slogan of Swarajya' championed by early leaders like Tilak,was distinct throw back to the 'Hindu Swarajya' of Chatrapathi Shivaji,which was the banner under which Shivaji organized the various clans of Marathas,to wage a war of independence against the Mughal and Deccan sultanates.It then follows that the Swarajya of Tilak and indian nationalism cannot be seen isolation from Shivaji's Swarajya,even though the political context in which they operated may have varied.What it served to provide was a sound ideological and historical grounding for inspiring the vision of a sovereign and independent nationhood.
If India today exists as a political realization of a sovereign nation state,its because such a nation state had a historical and civilizational basis.The Kings and queens and other political leadership of the bygone days,who helped conceive and nurture this nationhood,where not stunted in their political vision,they just did not have the clairvoyance to peek into the unknown future to see the vindications or denouements to their collective deeds.
