You and me will probably be long gone by 2073. But India will endure; perhaps even as an utopian United States of India, where the arc of democracy stretches across South Asia, the Pamirs and the Himalayas, unrestrained by ideology, religion or caste and creed; free thought, free exchange of ideas, free will...
Or not. Doomsday scenarios see an India singed by a Chinese dragon, perhaps even subsumed as a vassal state sixty three years from now, much as the Tibetans are today, as Taiwan could be tomorrow.
Islamic hordes are already knocking at our doors in 2010 in the form of the Taliban-Al Qaida, courtesy their re-birth in the lawless badlands of Afghan-Pakistan, as India hitches its star to the American wagon and pays the price for not putting the Pakistan genie firmly back in the box.
Unhinged by a Kashmir aflame, the fires of instability fanned steadily by Kashmiri insecurity, Delhi’s misgovernance and placing its faith in building economic strength over political goodwill, the virus of instability could spread as easily to the rest of the country. A Maoist island, much as the last Nizam would have had it, if it hadn’t been for a canny Sardar Patel and an astute V P Menon.
Pakistanis, inimical to our unstoppable growth rate are wont to say we are beset by ‘a thousand mutinies,’ that just as we dismembered our neighbour, so too will they see this mighty nation regress into the many satraps that peopled pre-independence India.
The purveyors of bad news say that instead of ‘the idea of India’ serving as the glue for a land of disparate people of diverse faiths and many tongues, it could all come apart.
As India’s Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh climbs the ramparts of the Red Fort on Sunday, warmed by the US president Barack Obama’s stirring endorsement of our nation saying India’s “belief in democracy, tolerance, and the rule of law have been an inspiration and beacon of hope for people around the world,” one can only hope that the idea of India does endure. For another 63 years.