Akhand Bharat: The Perennial Truth Behind Bhagwat's Call for Samrasta

When Dr. Mohan Bhagwat, the head of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, recently claimed that Hindus and Muslims have the "same DNA" going back 40,000 years, many of his detractors immediately attempted to lampoon the claim as a jaw-dropping denial of scientific evidence.

- DR. PRASHANT BARTHWAL

In fact, his words were less about molecular biology than the articulation of a more profound civilizational philosophy, a rejoinder beneath the multicoloured prism of religions, languages, and rituals. India is one people, one culture, one unbroken civilizational continuum.

Bhagwat's focus on shared ancestry, his antipathy toward exclusionary thought, and his expansive view of Hinduhood are not mere ideological frippery. They are empirical truths rooted in history, genetics, and culture; they are the sinews of Bharat's akhandta, her indivisibility, her national integrity.

The appeal to DNA is a metaphor, a convenient shorthand for civilizational continuity. Archaeological evidence from the Indus Valley and anthropological evidence across the subcontinent all point to the same conclusion: for tens of thousands of years, the essential human substratum of India has been incredibly stable. Populations shifted, tribes intermixed, and invaders passed through, but the biological substrate remained unchanged. What separates Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians today is not the bottomless wells of genetic distance, but layers of religious colourings superimposed on ancient, inherited pigmentations.

So, Bhagwat was indeed stating a civilizational truth, in a scientific metaphor. Just as the Saraswati and the Ganga might originate in different places but still nourish the same plains, so do India's communities rise from a shared wellspring.

To suggest that the two peoples are not of the same ethos is to fall for the colonialist trope of two nations, an insidious fiction used by Imperialist officials to break up a culture they could not understand. Our past bears out Bhagwat's thesis with beacons of light. Throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period, India produced thinkers and poets within the Islamic tradition who could not resist the pull of Sanatan Dharma's spiritual efflorescence.