The Indian subcontinent, this vast landmass of South Asia, is home to one of the world’s oldest and most influential civilizations. It is among the most populous regions on earth and exhibits an extraordinary degree of cultural, linguistic, and genetic diversity. Only Africa as a continent surpasses India in the sheer depth and complexity of this diversity.

Across the subcontinent, one encounters communities that phenotypically resemble Africans, Europeans, Southeast Asians, and many others. Genetically, a vast majority of Indians arise from varying admixtures of two broad ancestral lineages: Ancestral North Indians (ANI), related to West Eurasians, and Ancestral South Indians (ASI), distantly related to the indigenous Andaman Islanders. This diversity is not accidental; it is the cumulative result of successive migratory waves that began as early as the late Pleistocene and continued through prehistoric and historic periods.

Yet despite these layers of ancestry and migration, the subcontinent gradually evolved a shared civilizational grammar rather than a single uniform identity.

Birth of Philosophical Ideas

India’s first major urban civilization was the Indus Valley Civilization (c. 3300 BCE–1300 BCE). It was marked by remarkable urban planning, sophisticated drainage systems, standardized construction, and a script that remains undeciphered to this day. What followed was the Vedic or Indo-Aryan Age (c. 1500 BCE–500 BCE). This period was characterized by largely autonomous tribal polities rather than centralized authority. Social and political structures were looser, technological progress was slower, and society appeared less outwardly unified. Yet it was during this era that foundational shifts in thought occurred, most notably the emergence of philosophical and spiritual ideas that would later evolve into what we broadly call Hindu philosophy. In that sense, it was a period of inward consolidation rather than outward expansion.

The remarkable continuity of Indian culture rests largely on three interlinked factors:

1. Its inherent pluralism. Indian civilization has historically been accommodative, absorbing diverse faiths, philosophies, and even multiple conceptions of the divine without demanding uniformity.
2. Its civilizational depth. An unbroken lineage that has evolved organically over several millennia rather than through abrupt cultural replacement.
3. Its lived integration. A seamless blending of faith, knowledge, nature, and history that permeates everyday life rather than remaining confined to scripture or elite discourse.

Though the basic fabric remains, the resilient web has been weakened by the import of alien frameworks. The mistake was not faith itself, but freezing living philosophies into rigid identities. When inquiry became inheritance, and practice became permission-based, openness shrank. The modern impulse to “defend” traditions often ends up rejecting even legitimate questions.

Dogmas brought in by invaders and occupiers, and later reinforced by post-colonial thinking, encouraged some Indians to see themselves through religious and Western categories such as majority, minority, orthodoxy, conversion, and blasphemy. These ideas made sense in Abrahamic contexts; they sit uneasily on Indian soil. The tragedy is not that outsiders labelled us, but that some of us internalised those labels.

Political Misuse of Identity

When India became a democracy, electoral politics became a fait accompli. Even before Independence, the political scene in India had begun to be shaped by religion. The play of identity politics had already started when the nation itself was divided on politico-religious lines.

Indian political space today is a maze of contradictions where one can get lost indefinitely. A clearer picture emerges only when the space is observed dispassionately and without preconceived ideas.

When philosophy becomes identity, it becomes a tool of mobilisation rather than reflection. Politics prefers certainty; philosophy thrives on doubt.

In India, this shift from philosophical plurality to political identity is visible even in the way parties organise their voter bases. Both sides of today’s debates often mirror each other more than they admit, each demanding conformity in the name of protection.

A brief look at major political parties and their perceived voter bases illustrates this: BJP (religion), Shiv Sena (religion, dynasty), INC (Muslims, religion, dynasty), Muslim Leagues (religion), Akali Dal (religion), SP (clan, dynasty), BSP (Dalits), DMK and AIADMK (Dravidian identity, regionalism). Parties such as JD(U), YSR Congress, TMC, and Biju JD are largely regional or parochial in orientation. AAP is relatively new, while the Left as an ideology has largely faded in India. Only a handful of these parties possess a truly national outlook - something essential for a country aspiring to grow, develop, and be counted among the leading nations of the world.

What India Must Reclaim

What has gradually been lost is not faith, but the culture of debate that once accompanied it. Public debate – śāstrārtha - was once central to intellectual life. Ideas were examined, challenged, and defended through reasoned argument. Today much of that space has been replaced by shouting matches, where volume often substitutes for thought - unfortunately even within our legislatures. Questioning, once considered an essential part of the search for truth, is now too easily mistaken for disrespect.

Yet the deeper civilizational instinct has not disappeared entirely. At the everyday level, through ritual flexibility, syncretic practices, and a quiet tolerance in daily life, something of that older spirit still survives. It may no longer dominate public discourse, but it continues to endure quietly within society.

The way forward, therefore, is not a romantic return to the past. What needs to be recovered is not the forms of the past but its method: inquiry, humility, and the acceptance of plurality. India does not need to become more religious, nor less religious. What it may need instead is to become philosophical once again.

(The author is an Indian Army veteran and a contemporary affairs commentator. The views are personal. He can be reached at  kl.viswanathan@gmail.com )