The Language May Change. The Civilisation Doesn’t.
Take a pandit from Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh. Seat them together and ask them to perform the same 'yajna'.
Watch what happens.
Different languages. Different accents. Different customs. Yet when the mantras begin, the 'sur, taal and rhythm' somehow fall into place. Almost instinctively, they know the same civilisational grammar.
Now ask these six men to have a conversation with each other. That’s when the real fun begins.
In India, language can change every few hundred kilometres. Food changes. Clothing changes. Festivals take different forms. Yet beneath all that diversity runs a deeper cultural thread that has survived centuries.
That, to me, is the extraordinary idea of 'Sanatan'. Not uniformity, but continuity. Not everyone being the same, but everyone belonging to something larger than themselves.
This is India’s greatest paradox: 'our diversity can be our vulnerability, but it is also our greatest strength.'
Empires, invaders and colonial rulers have all tried, in different ways and for different reasons, to understand, influence or exploit these fault lines. The British mastered the politics of classification and division.
Today, the battlefield has changed.
The new weapon isn't a sword, a cannon or even a newspaper. It is an 'algorithm'.
Machine learning knows what makes us angry. Social media knows what keeps us scrolling. Algorithms can quietly create separate realities for different groups of Indians, feeding each one a tailored version of the truth until disagreement becomes distrust and distrust becomes division.
The recent online protests and digital campaigns are only reminders of how powerful this new battlefield can become. And I suspect we haven't seen the last of it.
So I worry less about an outsider telling Indians what to think and more about technology becoming so good at making Indians suspicious of one another that we start doing the dividing ourselves.
The ultimate objective of any such influence campaign is power: to shape public opinion, political outcomes and eventually who governs, and whose interests that government serves.
But there is one thing algorithms cannot easily manufacture or destroy: our civilisational memory. India has survived because we were never one language, one cuisine, one costume or one way of worshipping.
We survived because, beneath all the differences, we remained connected.
Unity in Diversity isn't merely India's slogan. It may be our most important defence.
The question is not whether someone will try to divide us.
They will.
The question is whether we will be clever enough to recognise the algorithm before we become its ammunition.
Brace for impact. The next battle for India may be fought not on our streets, but inside our feeds.
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