India’s dangerous dream of empire

Every year, the descendants of Nathuram Godse gather in a parking lot to honor the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi and renew his dying wish: that his ashes not be scattered until the Indus River flows through a united Hindu India. Behind the ritual is one of the most enduring and least understood ideas in modern Indian politics: Akhand Bharat, an “Undivided India” that would include all or part of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and even Afghanistan.

Once dismissed as the ethno-racial fantasy of an extremist movement, Akhand Bharat has steadily moved from the margins toward the center of political life with the rise of the Hindu Right. In Assassin’s Ashes, veteran journalist Dhirendra K. Jha traces how the dream of Hindu rule over a vast imagined empire survived scholarly debunking, the death of Gandhi’s assassin, and passed quietly through generations of the far-right organization RSS. It ultimately found expression at the highest levels of the Indian state under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, invoked by senior government figures, displayed in Parliament, and taught in RSS-backed schools.

Based on archival research, rare documents, interviews, and on-the-ground reporting across the region, Assassin’s Ashes shows how a century-old vision of a Hindu empire has returned as a political force, with profound implications for India, its minorities, its neighbors, and the future of democracy and peace in the subcontinent.