Guess which country I am talking about

Let me start off with a series of six facts about an unnamed country. The objective is for the reader to guess which country I am talking about:

• This country was well protected from foreign invasions by natural barriers to outsiders for centuries and possibly much longer
• In the recent past (last 300 years),  it was colonized by Europeans
• The colonial European priests (when they were not proselytizing) came up with theories suggesting that the country is actually made of two *distinct* groups of people. One of these groups is supposed to have been the "natives" while the other group is supposed to have "invaded" the country and conquered the "native"  group
• The colonial European "scholars" who picked up this theory suggested that the group that allegedly invaded was European in race and so had the "right" to rule over rest of the country
• This "theory" was systematically taught to all the kids studying in the schools setup by the European priests. 
• After a while, the people of the country started looking at themselves as either belonging to one group or the other. This results in unnecessary political animosity and narrow minded divisions between the people of the country. 

 Now, take a guess as to which country I am talking about.. I can think of 4 possibilities..

• If you have no idea, then I have some suggested reading for you at the end, if you are interested.
• If your guess was India, then kudos to you.. this is indeed the case. But look at the next point..
• If your guess was Rwanda, then kudos to you.. that is indeed the case also.
• If you had some other country in mind that fits this picture, do let me know.. I will be interested in finding out more..

In essence, the colonial Europeans used similar tricks across the world to gain political control of the lands and plunder it. And it has deep relevance even to this day. I can give many examples for this w.r.t. India, but let me just give one for brevity -- Even today, you can see many people in India use the words "Aryan" and "Dravidian" in the sense of a race or a distinct people. There is even a bunch of political parties in my home state of Thamizh Naadu with "Dravida" in their names in the same racial sense. The irony is that these two words (Arya/Dravida) were never used in the racial sense until the colonial Europeans used them this way.

In the same way, in Rwanda, the "Tutsi" and "Hutu" were never distinct "races" till the colonial Europeans made them that way. Before the European arrival, Tutsi and Hutu boundary was fuzzy and one could become another. But anyone who has watched the heart rending film "Hotel Rwanda" knows a bit of what happened in 1994 in Rwanda.

If we are ever to become a prosperous country and lift our rotting millions out of poverty, we should first remove the colonial junk from the minds of Indian elite. (The "elite", in this context, includes you and me since both of us are way richer than the average Indian.) Otherwise, India will always be a pawn in someone else's chess board. The first "junk" we should remove from our mind is the false "Aryan/Dravidian" distinction amongst us.

Suggested reading topics:

• Film 'Hotel Rwanda'
• Book: A Thousand Hills, by Stephen Kinzer
• google Rwandan genocide 1994
• google Aryan Invasion Theory