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Indira didn't answer that last question. She didn't answer with words, but with a more joyous tone of voice that became reflected in whatever else we talked about during our trek back to the car.
I chose to walk back to the car for also another reason. I loved the colorful atmosphere on Chandni Chowk, and its narrow side streets with countless shops.
"I love to live in the old city," said Indira as we visited one of the many shops along the way, as we had done severl times before. "I love the atmosphere here," she said, "but mostly I love it here because the old city is a part of our history, the real history of India. Some of it is from the time before India became converted into the colonial possession of the foreign conqueror that occupied of our land. This old city, 'Old' Delhi, had been the capital of Mughal India, the time when our country stood proudly in the world and was respected for its culture and its people. Old Delhi had been the pearl of India in those days back in the 17th Century. India had been a sovereign country then, except for Islam being superimposed that opposed the old Brahmanic dictatorship. No one would have imagined in those days when India reestablished itself that its sovereignty would ever end again. But it did end, brutally."
"Yes, it did end, but you won your sovereignty back," I interjected.
Indira shook her head. "We didn't get it back. Before the British left they divided India. They cut us up along religious lines. They sliced off Pakistan and other places. There had been huge protest demonstration against the division. People from both regions marched side by side in 1947, chanting together, 'We are brothers! We are brothers!' Nevertheless, the division was imposed according to the old imperial policy of divide and conquer, a policy that was evidently designed to keep the region in turmoil and to keep it economically weak and culturally divided and at war. Officially the division was imposed to separate the Muslims who had ruled the subcontinent for over 300 years under the Mughal Empire from the Hindus that had always been the majority in India. It wasn't a division by democratic election, it was a division imposed by an Empire, and it was imposed to protect the caste system that had given the British imperials their power. If the Islamic people had no been pushed out of India and into Pakistan, the caste system would not have survived in India. India would be a much more powerful industrial nation today that it is. The imperials feared the economic development potential of a united India. That's why they chopped us up. They wanted to keep us impotent and small. And now you say, Peter, forget all that and recognize yourself as human beings, and celebrate it."
"When the caste system no longer rules in India and divides society, as well as the sexual caste system that still rules in almost all societies, then maybe the political division that has caused so much harm will become resolved too," I said to her. "As you said yourself, shouting with one voice, you are all brothers. We all are; we are offspring of the family of menkind. Once this is fully understood and acknowledged, and respected across society, a new united India will arise. Of course, by then the political solution will be a trivial thing. It will only reflect the unity that has always existed. Once this becomes recognized the details of administration become secondary and unimportant. And another surprise will happen. You will recognize at this point that India had not been a sovereign country for 3,500 years since the Aryan invasion. At first the Aryans ruled India. After the Islamic invasion the Muslims ruled India. After that the British ruled India. Old Delhi is really a part of Islamic culture and New Delhi a part of the colonial culture. Maybe the closest India came to being sovereign was in the twilight when the Brahmanic Dark Age drew to a close and before the Islamic Age had fully begun, around the 10th Century. Maybe that is where you find the real culture of India."
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