By Brig Azad Sameer (Retd)

Earlier today, a friend sent me a digital poster. It featured a map of Bengal, a timeline of dynasties, and a bold headline: Hindus have reclaimed Bengal after 800 years. I am someone who by accident of birth is a Muslim, although the funny part is that some of my clan demand proof. To, me the image of the poster didn’t just feel like a political update; it felt like a silent, invisible boundary line being drawn across a shared past. My friend insisted it was just history and general knowledge. I accepted the words in silence. We continue to be the great friends that we have been all these years, bound by shared memories that predate these shifting sands. Yet, beneath that clinical defense lies a troubling psychological shift: the quiet transformation of a modern democratic mandate into a narrative of ancient civilizational warfare. It makes one wonder when our personal bonds became so fragile that they required the armor of historical justifications.

This uneasy realisation feels particularly sharp against the backdrop of my own life. I spent nearly three and a half decades serving in the Indian Army, retiring some fifteen years ago. In all those years of wearing the uniform, moving shoulder to shoulder with men of every conceivable background, I never once felt a sense of exclusion. The camaraderie was absolute, the shared identity unquestioned. But today, something seems to have changed decisively. A subtle, cold current has entered our collective consciousness, making me look back at my service not just with pride, but with a quiet, growing yearning for a time when belonging was simply understood.

When a political victory is framed as a religious reclamation, the implications feel heavy and deeply unsettling. It suggests that for more than a millennium, anyone not of a specific faith was merely an occupier, an interloper, or a guest whose time has run out. This mindset views the ballot box not as a tool for governance or social welfare, but as a sword for correcting history’s perceived grievances. It forces us into an archaic mindset, replacing the quiet dignity of a citizen with the harsh, binary identity of the conqueror or the conquered. We are no longer neighbors building a future together; we are ghosts re-enacting ancient battles.

If the majority begins to view political success as a religious re-conquest, the delicate concept of a pluralistic society starts to fracture. Where does that leave the minorities? It leaves them in a state of perpetual audition – constantly needing to prove their belonging to a land that their ancestors have called home for generations. It turns everyday neighbors into others and shared regional histories into a zero-sum game of winners and losers. There is deep loneliness in realising that the soil you walked upon, defended, and loved is suddenly being measured by a yardstick you can never meet.

True knowledge should tell us that history is a complex tapestry, woven with threads of coexistence, compromise, and shared survival. It is more often than not a perspective of the writer and the reader, not a scoreboard of tribal triumphs. When we celebrate a political win as a religious victory, we don’t just exclude millions; we diminish the very democratic values that allowed the win to happen in the first place. In trying to reclaim a past that cannot be changed, we risk losing the fragile, precious present we have built together.