Kabir says calling India, that is Bharat, a civilisational state is a “right-wing position.” We disagree; and the disagreement isn’t political, it’s archaeological.
Look at what Mohenjo-daro actually gives us: the Pashupati Seal; three-faced, ithyphallic, seated in yogic posture, surrounded by elephant, tiger, buffalo, rhinoceros. Proto-Shiva. The Mother Goddess figurines. Linga and yoni stones. Pipal veneration. The sacred bull. Every single religious thread runs forward into the living Hindu tradition.
Lord Shiva is still being worshipped. The pipal is still sacred. The ritual logic of the Great Bath still lives in the sacred tank. That is not assertion; that is continuity you can touch.
Pakistan is welcome to construct an “Indus National” identity. But that project requires explaining how a civilisation whose core deity was Proto-Shiva bequeaths itself to a state whose foundational theology requires the repudiation of exactly that. Geography is not continuity. Practice is.
India doesn’t claim Harappa because of lines on a map. She claims it because she never stopped. Four thousand years of unbroken thread; from the Pashupati Seal to the nearest functioning Shiva temple. Pure and simple stratigraphy.
@Kabir – India is both the inheritor of the IVC and the Mughal empire.
Pakistan is well hehehe
This is “low signal”.
There was no nation-state of “India” before August 15, 1947.
I’m not going to get into this incredibly repetitive conversation again,
I can see Pakistan as partial or majority inheritor of the Indo-Muslim legacy
This is a reasonable argument.
so churlishly pedantic. Iran isn’t ‘Persia’, but it still is. India similarly is a concept that pre-dates the concept of modern day ‘nation state’.
You can bury your head in the sand all you want.
Clearly you don’t understand what a nation-state is.
BRITISH India was a colony. It was the British that created the borders of “India”.
This is the historical consensus. But please feel free to ignore it.
The Mughals and their predecessors had a very clear idea and definition and borders of their Empire, which was Hindustan.
This is ahistorical
Admin Note: this is a low signal comment, you have not rebutted our comment.
My point was that when the Mughals used the word “Hindustan” they meant the area around Agra and Delhi. They spoke of going from “Hindustan” to the Deccan.
“Hindustan” did not mean the nation-state of India.
Is Iran a civilizational state in your view kabir 😀
Iran is a sub-civilisational state; Islam is her civilisational though there is no doubt Iran is the dominant Middle East power.
Mesopotmia (upper & lower) are her projection fields but Anatolia, the Levant, the Persian Gulflets, Yemen & even Egypt are in shadow.
India is both a civilisational (Hindu) state, a continental one (the Indian Subcontinent & Ocean are her natural Dominions).
Also as She is the originator of Dharma; she is the founder of a rival World System (Dharmic), which means she is Supra-Civilisational.
Remember everyone went in search of India (Columbus, the first Chinese novel).
Dharmic World system is essentially a counterpoint to the Abrahamic world.
Kabir alas is steeped in colonial modalities (TNT is a post-colonial construct) to really grapple with the sui generis state of India that is Bharat.
Some Iranians certainly think so.
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/iran-iraq-and-politics-civilization
I think “civilization state” is a right-wing concept. It’s not one that I would apply.
the questions that will have to be answered ( as per this article) are as follows:
i) establish that a credible civilisation based on ‘ hindu’ symbols from indus and pre indus times existed and it continues in hindu india.
ii) then, systematically prove that this was a ‘jahil’ civilisation and claim that the islamic invasions of its land ‘liberated’ the ignorant masses from idol worship etc.
In my essay, I extensively quoted Shashi Tharoor– a centrist Indian. He explicitly argued that the whole concept of a “civilizational state” is inherently illberal.
Mohenjodaro and Harrapa are within the boundaries of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I have consistently argued that Pakistanis should own all the history that lies within our borders. For what it’s worth, all “Pak Studies” books begin with the IVC.
Pakistan doesn’t need to claim an “Indus National” identity. Our existence is based on the Two Nation Theory. Otherwise, there was no point to a separate sovereign nation-state.
Shashi Tharoor’s essay is well worth reading. You don’t have to agree with it but it is an incredibly articulate rebuttal of this notion that India is a “civilizational state”
“Civilization States Are Profoundly Illiberal”
https://www.noemamag.com/civilization-states-are-profoundly-illiberal/
Quoting famous people does not make an argument
Sure.
The point is that Shashi is neither a Pakistani nor a Muslim.
You seem to think that India being a “civilizational state” is a fact. It is not. It’s a subjective opinion. Shashi doesn’t share it.
That’s all I’m saying.
Shashi is entitled to his opinion.
Shashi represents the center-left position in India.
Your opinion is not a fact.
India’s IVC inheritance is literally everywhere.
Admin Note: This is a low-signal comment; you have not rebutted our post.
I have personally walked on the IVC site in Lothal. Didn’t get a chance to go Dholavira yet, but probably next visit to India.
Pretending that IVC is ‘not Indian’ is like declaring victory in Op Sindoor and appointing yourself Field Marshal 🙂
Touche
And this is an anti-Pakistan comment.
Insults to Pak Fauj complete with smiley face. Utterly juvenile.
We will not let you “personally walk” into Harrapa and Mohenjadaro,
I’ve “personally walked” in Harrapa. What’s your point?
That there is no geographical monopoly on IVC sites by the modern day nation state fabricated on 14th August 1947.
Admin Note: Stop Trolling
so are we in agreement that there is no geographical monopoly on IVC sites?
🙂
This is a statement of the obvious.
The IVC long preceded modern nation-states.
It’s not some big “gotcha” moment.
If one can call Pakistan “fabricated” why is it “trolling” to point out that India is also “fabricated”?
This is a double standard.
Pakistan is an invented nation; Chaudhary Rehmat Ali’s pamphlet.
India has antecedents to the deepest history. It does not make Pakistan less real; it exists (and sometimes myths/imaginations are more important than reality) but there is no need to simply counter back.
Calling Pakistan “fabricated” is triggering to Pakistanis.
> Calling Pakistan “fabricated” is triggering to Pakistanis.
So?
You accuse others of trolling in every other conversation and somehow your position is worse than every troll on this site.
Kabir has gone silent the past day or two; I hope all is well.
India winning the WC.
Please! I don’t care about all about cricket.
It would be nice if you could celebrate your country’s victory without disparaging Pakistan.
Sports is not war.
Kabir’s back
Admin Note: no need to provoke. BB let’s bottle back some of that “josh” please 🙂
Maybe you don’t care about what is triggering to Pakistanis. That’s your prerogative.
RNJ knows exactly which buttons he’s pushing when he calls Pakistan “fabricated”. This is de-legitimatization of Pakistan. That is something that no patriotic Pakistani will stand for.
“somehow your position is worse than every troll on this site”– Maybe you haven’t seen BB actively wishing harm to Pakistan.
I can’t change your perspective which is fine. You’re a random person on the internet. But there is a clear animus against Pakistan from many commenters here.
This is true; the Ummah has done well standing by the sovereign integrity of Iran.
My Urdu teacher was mentioning 90%+ of Pakistan population support Iran.
In fact if Pakistan were to abet an American invasion of Baluchistan (apparently the easiest route) there would be an outright Revolution in Pakistan.
What Musharraf could / had to do is not available to Asim Munir in a Trump-Imran Khan landscape.
Pakistan & the Ummah has transformed dramatically in the span of a generation. Even if there is zero love for the Iranian regime; everyone understand that Muslim solidarity means that Iran MUST fix her own problems internally.
None of the Gulf States or Azerbaijan or Turkey have escalated. Even AfPak stands with Iran so not a single neighbour is abetting this.
Fundamentally, 9/11 was an attack on the American homeland. This war was entirely President Trump’s choice.
General Musharraf was apparently told “You’re either with us or against us” and “We’ll bomb you back to the stone age”. Also, it didn’t hurt to become a major non-NATO ally. The “War on Terror” also rehabilitated General Musharraf in the US’s eyes.
yes but I don’t think Musharraf would be able to do the same thing this time around.
social media seems to have hugely consolidated Muslim political identity (while weakening Muslim religious identity).
I don’t think General Musharraf had much of a choice. When you are told to cooperate or be “bombed back to the stone age”, you cooperate.
Fundamentally, Pak Fauj runs foreign policy. They will do whatever they believe is in the nation’s interest.
I do take your point that if Pakistan Army openly supports the US against Iran, there will be major unrest in Pakistan. But I think Pakistan Army is quite capable of crushing any kind of unrest.
I don’t think so – we remember the Lawyer’s movement.
Pakistan is a hybrid regime now. Apparently Pakistan is on some sort of mixed working (online) owing to high fuel prices.
Yes, there are austerity measures. Schools are closed. Higher education is online. There’s a four day work week.
You are the real dhurandhar
erm thanks..
IVC people followed a non-Vedic religion while modern Indian Hindus follow a Vedic religion. They had a preference for eating beef, which is such a taboo that Hindus are willing to kill people over it. There is no real evidence of any continuity in script, religion, architecture etc. We do have some remnenants in culture like the bangles worn by Sindhi women upto the arm similar to the IVC figurine, or the Ajrak printing that is still common today in Sindh.
Genetically too, 70% Zagros ad 30% AASI is a ratio what you find generally in Sindhi populations when Steppe is removed, and the direct continous descendants live in Sindh and Punjab. Geographically, the major centres of IVC are in Punjab and Sindh.
Ascribing IVC to India or Pakistan is foolish, since these are modern national states and modern political entities. However if we are being honest, the people living inside Pakistan and some north western states in India are the only ones that have any genetic, geographical and cultural continuity.
There was no memory of IVC until British discovered it, especially to the Brahmins, so it must not have been that important or perhaps the Brahmins considered these people Mleccha. It clearly was not Hindu and people who ascribe Hindu civilization to it are just projecting their hopes onto it.
Do you perchance have access to a time machine, to be making such… confident assertions 🙂
“Ascribing IVC to India or Pakistan is foolish, since these are modern national states and modern political entities”
Absolutely correct. Nice to have another patriotic Pakistani on this forum
.
IVC is shared civilizational heritage of all Indians, whether they salute the tricolor or the Pakstani green and white. 🙂
Pakistanis are NOT Indian.
Emojis are juvenile. Carry on.
Indic. Children of the subcontinent.
Children of the IVC.
“South Asians”.
Choose your own moniker.
🙂
“South Asian” and “Indian” are not the same thing. Sri Lankans are South Asian. They are not Indian.
“Indian” is a nationality not a race. Pakistanis do not carry Indian passports. We have our own national identity.
Admin Note; this is simply baiting K
Genetically too, 70% Zagros ad 30% AASI is a ratio what you find generally in Sindhi populations when Steppe is removed, and the direct continous descendants live in Sindh and Punjab.
Interesting way of looking at it
There was no memory of IVC until British discovered it, especially to the Brahmins, so it must not have been that important or perhaps the Brahmins considered these people Mleccha. It clearly was not Hindu and people who ascribe Hindu civilization to it are just projecting their hopes onto it.
Much of India was considered Mleccha by the Brahmins and still is.
the people living inside Pakistan and some north western states in India are the only ones that have any genetic, geographical and cultural continuity.(to IVC)
Would not those having AASI and Zargos (Iranian Hunter Gatherer) have similar genetics to IVC.
There are small scale IVC layout and IVC symbols in Tamil Nadus Keezadi excavation.
Yes of course Dravidians are the truest descendants of that culture but Arya-Dravidian culture is a synthesis.
Tbf so was Hindu-Muslim culture prior to the Brits
Sorry I didnt mean to say ‘only’ because ancestry similar to IVC forms primary ancestral group of all Indians. However what I mean is the direct genetic & cultural continuity and proximity exists mostly in areas of Indus and its tributaries in Pakistan and Northwestern India. We know so little about IVC that nothing can be said with confidence about other areas in India claiming genetic/cultural continuity with it.
I can’t post Vali Nasr’s interview but BB can just post a trailer to a Bollywood movie?
Interesting…
BB wrote a full accompaniment to his post; we have also put your recent post on review. It doesn’t add anything new but is just a repost. Novel content for BP si vous plait.
I’m talking about his post on Dhurandhar.
Please check. It’s literally the trailer and one line.
I’m not threatened by a Bollywood movie but this is not “novel content”.
Ok yes we hadn’t seen it.
We will allow it as Dhurundhar is topical; you know the fundamental point, you reserve novel comment for your blog but do reposts at BP.
BB, RNJ or Sbarr don’t do that.
If Dhurandhar is “topical” so is my rebuttal to the “civilizational state” discourse.
It’s fine. I’m not going to die on this hill.
Admin Note: don’t provoke otherwise you will LOSE your author privileges.
I’m not your “Bhai”. Get that through your head.
I just want the policy on “novel content” to be implemented even-handedly.
You are just trying to trigger Pakistanis by posting about anti-Pakistan movies. Carry on.
No 1 in Netflix Pakistan though.
I canceled Netflix. I’m not paying to watch trash.
Carry on.
Admin Note: stop
Nothing to do with “triggering” Pakistanis.
This is a topical movie and even X.T.M is a fan.
Admin Note: don’t be jealous of Bollywood
Secondly you know why your posts are being removed. You reserve novel content for your own spaces but just repost on BP.
BB can take judgement calls as to his post; we are not just about the letter but the spirit of the law.
I’m not “jealous” of Bollywood. I really don’t care that much.
“Dhurandhaar” is an anti-Pakistan movie.
I’m not fussed about my posts being removed. I just want to see the policy being applied even-handedly to everyone.
I post on Substack like twice a month. I’m not actually that concerned about generating content for that.
do we have to politicise this issue as much as we do?
Can we acknowledge that both countries have a claim to the IVC for different and overlapping reasons?
IVC sites exist in both countries and the people of both countries share the genetics and ancestors who lived in this civilisation.
We can’t read their writing, they may have been Dravidian although of course it haven’t been proven. Culturally I think it would be correct to say there is some continuity with Indian culture as pointed out by commenters here.
i would also point out that we don’t know to what extent Indus people saw themselves as distinct or not – with the people around them to the east or west. I could see how in a manner of speaking it shares vectors and trajectories with modern Pakistan. For example Indus trade with the near eastern civilizations existed and the recipe for curry reached Mesopotamia earlier than it reached South India.
This region of the north west subcontinent does get Vedic culture first (when the genetic plans was not Vedic and really a while distant world) and is also the first and main region to be governed successively by achaemenids, Greeks, scythians, parthians, etc.
the “same but different” vibe of the area of Pakistan is to my understanding something older than the arrival of Islam, in line with history which may or may not go back to the Indus age.
i hope people understand what I’m trying to say here.
Agreed.
The IVC existed long before modern nation-states.
Claiming it is “Indian” is a-historical.
I would say it’s both. It isn’t the monopoly of either. Like by the same token of my argument Vedic culture was once straddling Pakistan and the far north west of India. The gangetic plains l was different, not even “aryavarta”.
And yet today we say Vedic means Indian. To my knowledge Pakistan does not claim to be inheritors of Vedic civilisation. Although by the argument I presented technically it could – by way of purely geographic or genetic lens.
In fact in Rig Vedic times they probably thought people of the east were different and foreign…
And as the Vedic culture moved east I guess they “became” Indian- and later it became the bastion when the original homelands to the west were taken over by different people who thought Vedic people to the east were different and foreign.
And we don’t know if Indus people thought the same or not.
It’s by transit we can say IVC is both Pakistan and India, we all inherited their civ. And also more research needs to be done about who these people actually were.
Very high signal comments – thank you
“It isn’t the monopoly of either”– Agreed. My point was only that IVC long predated 1947 and the birth of the nation-states of India and Pakistan.
The fact remains that Mohenjodaro and Harrapa are located within Pakistan’s borders.
“Pakistan does not claim to be inheritors of Vedic civilization”– We do not. “Vedic” means “Hindu”. The “Ideology of Pakistan” is the Two Nation Theory. Pakistan sees itself as the homeland of the Muslims of British India.
Yet IVC occurred on what is now Pakistan’s land. Every “Pak Studies” textbook starts with IVC.
I wouldn’t say Vedic “means Hindu”. Religions like Jainism, Buddhism and other older religions that were completely different and apart from Vedic religion predominated in the eastern half of north India. Where my parents came from, Bengal – Vedic culture was not at all a part of our ancestral tradition and yet we are Hindu.
Vedic culture would have ancestral traditions that likely originated outside the subcontinent, perhaps Afghanistan and definitely diffused into Pakistan in its early history.
Hinduism is a culmination of the synthesis of these different worlds, Vedic from the North west, non Vedic religions in the north east and the south which eventually came together between the times of the Mauryans to the Guptas and after.
I was referring to how things are seen in Pakistan. For us–despite all the details you’ve pointed out– “Vedic” means “Hindu”.
Whether we like it or not, Pakistan’s nationhood is based on complete dissociation from the “Hindu” past. Anything “Hindu” is not liked by mainstream Pakistanis.
I have encountered this in my own work where Hindustani classical music–despite being Indo-Islamic and not at all “Hindu”– is seen as “Hindu”.
Yet we are completely OK with IVC. It lies within our geographical borders and thus belongs to us as much as it does to India.
Aitizaz Ahsan did try to establish an alternative to the TNT based on “Indus nationalism”. I don’t think that that is ever really going to take off in Pakistan.
Excellent comment
[…] On Civilisational States and Who Gets to Claim the Indus March 6, 2026 […]
Why do I find that what S.Qureshi said a bit of a lie? Maybe I’m silly and confused;
Pakistan & NW India have the most amount of Steppe ancestry, the most amount of ‘relatively recent’ invader genes…so how does direct genetic continuity exist there & not elsewhere? I remember Razib saying that a certain group of Guji Patels have very high IN too?
How are half ‘Russian’ Jatts or whatever carrying direct genetic continuity?
Maybe my genetics knowledge is off.
Yes, we know so little because they can’t excavate all of it.
But we already know alot, no?
IVC is not ‘Hindu’? So please correct me if I’m wrong, we have evidence of ‘Hindu’ Deities, Yoga, Sindhoor, Clothing (even Turbans), I think even the swastika etc.. How does religious continuity exist in Pakistan like he says?
I think beef eating has more to do with the Indian economy than anything. There are 1.5 billion to be catered to afterall. I eat beef, so do plenty Hindus. And not all of us care to do Vedic havans all the time. We don’t know what they called their religion but we see the continuity in ‘Hindu’ practises, don’t try to use the term ‘Vedic’ to be manipulative.
Does NW India & Pakistan especially only win with Proximity, nothing else?
Excellent comment –
If you marry outside of race, your children are still your direct descendants even if they share 50% of ancestry from a different group than say, your neighbour.
Yup
Your descendants would want to kill & replace the neighbour’s descendants, because miscegenation changes your phenotype. And when used as a colonial tool, it changes your religion & language too. Indo-Pak relations. 😜
If you are born & raised in Pakistan, or lived there long enough, then you’re Pakistani. But we are talking about a long dead ancient civilisation, that is why for me, promixity to the land is a moot point.
Who is genetically, phenotypically, religiously & culturally closer is what should matter more! (Both individually & as population groups)
Especially because this world is so very racist! (There are whites claiming IVC because of the Aryan invasion). 🙏🏻🌷
And as long as your logic applies to Israel-Palestine.🙏🏻🌷
Well I think it’s about genealogy versus genetic.
Genetic purity is overrated especially in the Ummah
Genetic purity is not overrated to me regarding ancient civilisations.
I should write on this
Genetic purity is not overrated to me regarding ancient civilisations.
Apparently Homo Sapien women cohabited with Neanderthal men.
Not much purity from the get go.
I have 2.5% Neanderthal Genes (23andMe)
And not vice versa
Apparently Homo Sapien women cohabited with Neanderthal men.
And not vice versa?
Not from what I have read
Yeah naah, I’m going to dispute that. Humans are tribal and ideology ultimately falls short of erasing that.
Please explain to me why so many millions of ‘Syeds’ are found in Pakistan, for instance.
The Ummah aspires to a brotherhood that looks beyond race, genetics, skin color, ethnicity, but we all know the reality. Let’s be honest and call it like it is.
Apparently, IVC was also called ‘The Black Land/Country.
I’ve read alot on the Harappa.com website. Posts by the archeologists themselves I think?
Apparently, IVC was also called ‘The Black Land/Country.
A picture is worth a thousand words
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Girl_(prehistoric_sculpture)