When people claim that India and Pakistan are “equally artificial,” they erase the long, uneven civilisational trajectories that produced both. Kabir, who is generally more courteous than the average Saffroniate imagines, still falls into this conceptual trap. But the question this raises is larger than contemporary geopolitics:
When was India’s Golden Age, and for whom?
A Golden Age can be political, cultural, philosophical, or civilisational. The answer depends on what we measure: scale, radiance, confidence, or continuity. Asking it forces us to examine whether India is a recent invention or a very old organism repeatedly broken and reconstituted.
Pakistan complicates this picture. As the Indus zone, it has deep civilisational roots of its own; older than Islam, perhaps as a geographic expression even older than the Vedic world. This is why, despite its ideological volatility, Pakistan will likely persist: it sits on a basin that has generated coherent cultures for five millennia. Its anti-India posture gives it political definition, but its underlying geography gives it durability.
India, that is Bharat, by contrast, has always been a continental project, but not a uniform one. The “wings” of India, Bengal, Punjab, Kashmir, the Northeast, have historically explored different variations of Indianness, each negotiating distinct external pressures and civilisational overlays. Yet all remained within the elastic but recognisable Indic sphere underpinned by the Ganges.
Meanwhile South India is the fourth civilisational zone: a core India rather than a frontier India. Dravidian polities were often the subcontinent’s most stable centres, imperial, literary, temple-building, maritime. They were not outliers. They were anchors. So when we ask about a Golden Age, we are not simply dating a dynasty.
We are asking: Which zone of India was flourishing, and according to which civilisational metric?
This cannot be reduced to modern borders. Nor can it be answered by pretending that India and Pakistan emerged from identical historical clay.
I keep saying that I am talking about Nation-States. The modern nation-states of “India” and “Pakistan” were both created on August 15, 1947. This is the historical consensus.
British India was a colony. The Mughal Empire was an empire etc etc.
There was no nation called “India”.
Those are technical definitions; so nation states only came into being with the Treaty of Westphalia but England & France pre-existed that
I am only clarifying the point that I am talking about the modern nation-states of India and Pakistan. In that sense they are both “equally artificial”.
France was not a nation-state until after the French Revolution. Before that it was a kingdom.
Obviously “India” has a long history. But that history does not all belong to the current entity called the Republic of India.
To argue anything else is a-historical.
Empirically 2025 is the Golden age: more prosperity more equality etc etc.
I just hope 2035 will be better 🙂
wrt the original framing:
North Indian golden age would be the Gupta-Vakataka age 400-500 CE including Maharashtra where the Vakatakas ruled.
As for south hard to look beyond the Chola peak from 1000AD onwards.
For Muslim elites it would be Mughal peak;
Question of Golden age is always wrt to for whom !
Asokas Empire never extended to Sri Lanka. The Empire stopped in Kalinga, modern Orissa.
What Asoka did was sen his son Mahinda and daughter Sangamitta to Sri Lanka to introduce Buddhism. For that Sri Lankan Buddhist have been grateful for 2000+ years. Regularly reminded by the monks during Buddhist Holiday sermons.
Asoka also sent emissaries to Myamar to spread Buddhism
Many have tried to occupy Sri Lanka over the millennia. It was only the British that conquered all of Sri Lanka
The Chola’s held the North Central Province the Raja-Rata for about 80 year. Their goal was to plunder the wealth. There is some huge Hindu Temple in South India that was built with this plunder.
Not bad for small country about the size of Ireland, next to a giant neighbor to have retained its identity for over 2000 years.
From AI
Chola emperors, especially Rajaraja Chola I and Rajendra Chola I, conquered Lanka (Sri Lanka) and utilized its resources, including revenue, gold, and manpower, for constructing their magnificent temples like the Brihadisvara Temple in Thanjavur, funding vast economic systems, and displaying imperial power, integrating Sri Lankan wealth and tribute into the Chola heartland’s economic and religious centers.
My note, the Cholas never grasped the that wealth of Sri Lanka was from its “Hydraulic” technology and its vast network of canals and huge reservoirs. They got the wealth, but not the technology that created that wealth.