There really are two nations in this mix. But they are not the ones you are thinking of. They exist on two sides of a boundary called reality.
One of these nations is made of real people, real systems, and real consequences. The other is a nation of the mind and exists nowhere except the imaginations of those who believe in it. It doesn’t have a clear name. Some call it the Hindu Rashtra, others call it an Islamic Nation. It does not matter, those are two names for the same thing.
The people who live in the unreal nation are all divorced from reality. They don’t see corruption, malnutrition, unemployment, and poverty. They are more concerned with imaginary pasts and their equally imaginary glories. They are not worried about the fact that their hard-earned money is being swindled away into the pockets of billionaires who could buy several small countries three times over. What bothers them is a lack of a theocratic state that could justify their WhatsApp forwards and satisfy their pride addiction.
These two nations – one real and one imaginary – have been at war for a long time. The people who fight at the border in this war are not soldiers. They are scholars and students and members of the Press (Real ones. Not the RW cardboard cutouts masquerading as intellectuals). They have kept the hordes at bay with statistics, research, ground-level awareness, and advocacy for common sense policy decisions.
These are formidable weapons, but they often strike out before the great power that fuels the hordes of the imaginary nation – storytelling. It is through stories that these hordes seek to summon their nation of the mind into existence. In modern parlance, we call it a narrative. There is a narrative expounding the glories of the Hindu nation, even though its proposers will struggle to tell you what exactly they mean by it. Similarly, there is a narrative glorifying the Islamic nation, even though its flagbearers will not be able to list any benefits of it if you ask them.
These narratives assault reality even as they seem to assault each other, vying for space in the minds of those who live in reality because that’s how they grow strong.
