General Musharraf has come and gone. Whatever maybe the long term impact of his entertaining visit, he did achieve one thing--he made us look within ourselves, and ask once again, who we are as Indians, and how are we different from our neighbour. For the past fifty years, we have grown up with the belief that Pakistan is a monolithic, theocratic state with one religion, one language, and one mind. India is the opposite--with many religions, many languages, many communities and many minds. In the 1990s, with the ascent of the BJP, a second conception of India became popular with, perhaps, a quarter of our voters. Instead of the plural India of the first conception, it views the nation as singular and essentialist, which will be energised by Hindu nationalism. In its view, India has been victim of a thousand years of foreign invasions, and is now threatened by multinationals and particularly American culture. It wishes to restore it subliminally to a pure, pre-invasions, and eternal Hin...