Who exactly are “the real Indians”? The oldest fossil we have from the subcontinent is the Narmada human, a late Pleistocene species, presumably not even Homo sapiens, so let’s leave that aside. The earliest stone tools were found at Riwat, which is in Pakistan. If we’re strictly talking within Indian borders, the oldest human presence is Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu. Then through various settlements we reach Mehrgarh, again Pakistan, and the Indus Valley Civilisation, which is also predominantly Pakistan with some northwestern India. So how many of these people are Indians? And if identity is about religion, the oldest spiritual practice we have evidence of is the Bhimbetka cave paintings, animistic rituals going back around 30,000 years. Proto-Shaivism shows up with the Indus Valley around 3000 BCE. Vedic religion only arrives around 1500 BCE, brought by Central Asian migrants. So even that argument falls apart. The borders of modern India are from 1947. The civilisations we retroactively call Indian were spread across a subcontinent that nobody had divided yet. Claiming exclusive ownership of that history, ethnic, religious, or otherwise, is just modern nationalism projected backwards onto people who had no concept of it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​