India is a thought—a thought by the people of India, not by a handful of powerful individuals.

It is a beautiful thought that exists. This thought gives us hope and love; it feels like a warm hug on a monsoon evening. Within this thought, everyone is accepted, everyone is equal, and everyone is a true nationalist. When the thinkers thrive, the thoughts thrive. When they fight, the thought fights. It is a deeply symbiotic relationship—one is incomplete and incapable without the other.

The thought is vast and melancholic by nature. Somewhere, someone returning from the mosque buys chicken from a shop where Hanuman Ji hangs on the wall. Somewhere else, a Pandit Ji buys paneer from a shop called Rahim’s Corner. A Sikh visits a church during prayer, simply out of curiosity to understand how worship unfolds there. As I said, the thought is vast. It embraces everyone equally.

One afternoon, the sky suddenly turns dark. Rain-soaked clouds swallow the entire horizon. Thunder rolls across the heavens. The lone tree outside my window bends wildly, as though dancing at a rock-and-roll concert. Rain pours relentlessly.

That day, I heard that some thought-breakers had entered our beautiful thoughts. They try to penetrate it with power and ideology. They try to break our legs and make us physically crippled. They try to feed us hatred and propaganda to make us intellectually crippled. But the thought must survive. It must thrive. And it will—so long as the thinkers continue to thrive.

Now let me tell you a story I once heard from a thinker.

There was once a king in undivided Bengal. He ruled with both humor and heart and loved his people. Whenever the Muslim community protested, the king built a mosque, and the people became happy and forgot their protest. Whenever the Hindu community protested, the king built a temple, and the people became happy and forgot their protest. Thus, life continued peacefully.

One day, a teacher from a distant land arrived. He was astonished by the countless temples and mosques scattered across the kingdom. Every road seemed to lead to one. Yet despite searching tirelessly, he could not find a single school. That day, he promised himself that he would bring the light of education to this land. He wandered until he found shelter in a cave high in the mountains, far from the king’s palace.

Weeks passed. With patience and persistence, the teacher convinced a few villagers to send their children to him. At first, the villagers struggled even to understand the word education. “What is this new thing?” they wondered. Slowly, curiosity replaced doubt. More children arrived. Parents began to realize that whatever this mysterious thing called education was, it made their children wiser. It helped both parents and children understand what was right, what was fair, and what was possible.

The teacher taught everything he knew. He explained rights. He explained power. He explained that the land they tilled belonged, in part, to them. He introduced poetry, art, theatre, and sonnets. Every alternate day, each student recited a poem. Knowledge nurtured empathy.

Everything flourished. Children learned. Parents rejoiced. But then something changed. The king realized there had been no protests for a long time. No protests meant no new temples. No new mosques. Something was wrong.

The king ordered his soldiers to investigate. For four days they searched without success. On the fifth evening, while camping beneath a mountain, one soldier noticed a fire burning high above. At dawn they climbed toward it.

There they found a man. He was nearly six feet tall, brown-skinned, pale with exhaustion, wearing an untrimmed beard. His hair was tangled, and dirt had settled beneath his long fingernails. To the soldiers, he looked like a madman.

They questioned him. Every answer he gave was thoughtful. Finally, they asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I am educating the children,” he replied.

The soldiers had never heard such a thing. They asked again. He answered the same way. Certain he was insane, they arrested him and took him before the king. Better, they thought, to return with a prisoner than with nothing at all.

The soldiers described everything they had witnessed. Unlike them, the king understood exactly what education was. He also knew how dangerous educated people could become to rulers who relied on ignorance. So he declared the teacher a lunatic, a trespasser, and the greatest threat to the kingdom. He sentenced him to death. The execution was set for Sunday.

News spread quickly. People from every corner of the kingdom gathered to save their beloved teacher—their first educator. The king’s army surrounded the gallows with swords, spears, and clubs, refusing to let anyone pass. Still, the people kept pushing forward. They wanted to reach their teacher.

But before they could, the king hanged him.

Grief erupted. Then came anger. Then resistance. People grabbed bricks, sticks, machetes, and even boti—the curved vegetable cutters from their kitchens. They fought with whatever they could find.

The king finally understood. No temple. No mosque. Nothing he could build would stop this storm. Education had spread. Its roots could no longer be pulled from the soil. The illusion of his power had been shattered.

That very night, the king fled. He never returned. The villagers reclaimed both the palace and the fields they had worked for generations. They demolished the king’s statue and, in its place, built a statue of their first teacher. That night they danced. That night they slept peacefully. That night they slept believing in a new beginning.

That is what education can do. That is why those in power often keep it away from ordinary people—or make it so expensive that only a privileged few can afford it. Education gives us the ability to distinguish right from wrong, love from hate, and need from desire. That is how the thinker ended his story.

From that day onward, I understood what education could truly accomplish—and why power so often seeks to control it. If we wish to keep our beautiful thought alive, we must never stop thinking. We must continue dreaming. Whenever thought-breakers attempt to invade our minds, we must resist them, just as the people in the story resisted.

Never stop thinking. Never stop dreaming.

If you possess the privilege to think and to dream, then think and dream not only for yourself, but also for those who cannot.

Remember, India is a thought, and we are the thinkers.