India as a Nation - since when?

Did India exist as a nation before the British arrived?Was India, as a nation, only conceived & fructified only by the British?I will argue below that India as a nation existed long before the British & even long before the Muslim invasions from the north west.

What is a nation? Political scientists draw a sharp distinction between the concepts of state and nation. State refers to government and other institutions which run the country. Nation, by contrast, is a psychological characteristic, what individuals identify with.

Why the name India? The word originates from River Indus, which is traced from Sindhu(refer to the article "Etymology of India" in wikipedia). The constitution of India states that the names Bharat & India would both be accorded the same status.Bharat, according to ancient literature, owes its name to kingdom of King Bharat.

The Vishnupurana says

"Uttaram yat samudrasya himatres chiva dakshinam
varsham tat bhartam nama bharati yatra santati"

It translates to "The country north of samudra and south of Himalayas is called Bharatam her people are called Bharateeya."(refer to HH Wilson's translation from 1840 available on sacred-texts.com). So whoever wrote this surely knew two frontiers of Bharat. But then when was this written. Again from Wilson's translation, the purana refers to the Guptas. The Guptas ruled India around 3rd century AD. So surely the book is after that.The purana refers to Buddhism still being a major religion in India. So it must have been written before Adi Sankara(circa 10th century) & his reformation that resulted in the elimination of Buddhism from India. So long before the British came & even before the concerted attacks from the north west an entity called Bharat along with a conception of its boundaries existed.

In the Kurma purana from the same time we have

"Bharatesu striyah pumso
Nanavarnah prakirtitah
Nana devarcane yukta
Nanakarmani kurvate"

translated as "men and women dwelling in Bharat belonged to different communities, worshipped different gods, and practised different rites." So pluralism(multi-cultures) was known & acknowledged but still it did not deter the writer from speaking of the whole unit called Bharat.

The epics, both Ramayana & Maha-bharata, dont deal with just a particular kingdom. We hear of Gandhara, Kosala, Magadha, Lanka & places like Mathura, Dwaraka, kurukshetra located in different locations of Bharat.People travelled freely between these places, inter married etc.

If we speak of political unity, wherein the whole territory is ruled by a single empereor, Magadhas, Ashoka, later Guptas & even later Akbar had their kingdoms spanning almost the whole of the subcontinent.

The fact that hundreds of kingdoms existed in Bharat cannot be used to claim that their was no concept of nation. We should'nt look into history through the prism of present day concepts. Nation-state is a recent phenomenon.Before Bismarck united Germany it was split into small principalities.Czechslovakia disappeared from the map during WWII. But does that mean the nation disappeared. The collective identity of the people cannot be erased.

Another interesting point is that though India & Burma are contiguous even the British did not have a common government for them.So it is not just the Indus, Himalayas & the oceans defining India. Even when there was no clear physical boundary, identities of India & Burma were distinct.

It is no surprise that every wave of invaders will lay claim to the land they have taken. It is in their interest to say that there was no nation before they came.No surprise the British claim that there was no India before they came. It served them with a moral reason to occupy India, not to mention the benefits of divide & rule.

Greek,Chinese & Arab travellers have long before written about the Indian civilization.It is this common civilization that we call a nation. Yes there was no Indian Republic before the British came, but a nation long existed in the minds, books & at times politically.

PS:Sankrant Sanu's article "Why India Is A Nation"
(http://www.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=4676)is a brilliant piece of work on this subject. I have used a few ideas from there.I suggest you to read it in full & at leisure.