bhaskar saikia

I’ve often noticed something curious in conversations about identity and nationhood. People who are deeply familiar with history and geography tend, more often than not, to speak from a place of belonging — a certain tenderness toward the land they inhabit and the story that shaped it. Those who know less of geography, though they may know their history well, often carry a more fluid sense of identity — one that transcends borders and leans toward a universal human narrative.

It’s not a rule, of course. But the pattern is worth pondering.

Geography grounds us. It gives contour to belonging — the rivers that shaped our myths, the hills that nurtured our languages, the plains that fed civilizations. To know geography is to understand how human stories are written not just in time, but in space. The soil beneath our feet ceases to be a mere surface; it becomes an archive of memory, of migration, of quiet continuities. Those who sense this connection often feel a natural inclination to protect and preserve it — a sentiment we might call nationalism, though in its gentlest sense: love for one’s land, its people, and its pulse.

History, on the other hand, gives us direction — a sense of how we arrived here, through struggle and change. But without geography, history can become abstract, detached from place. A person who knows history without geography might recognize patterns of oppression, power, and human folly — and so their sympathy may naturally extend beyond national borders, toward humanity as a whole. They see the moral of the story, but not always its roots.

Perhaps, then, the difference lies not in ideology, but in the way one experiences space. Those who understand the terrain — its rivers, its boundaries, its vulnerabilities — tend to think in terms of protection. Those who think in time — of past injustices and future ideals — tend to think in terms of liberation.

Neither is wrong. One guards the home; the other opens the window.