This morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off a  Run for Unity to mark his newly minted Rashtriya Ekta Divas or National Integration Day. Like so many of this other plans, Modi is simply repurposing an older programme. Until last year, National Integration Day used to be celebrated on Indira Gandhi’s birthday on November 19.

However, October 31 is also the birth anniversary of Modi's icon, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first home minister, who is credited with coaxing  and cajoling 550 princely states and territories to join the freshly minted union.

The government has so far been silent on whether it will continue to present the Indira Gandhi National Integration Award, traditionally presented today, which also marks the anniversary of the former prime minister's assassination.

While Patel was responsible for the physical integration of India, the business of making the idea of a single nation an intellectual and emotional reality for its citizens was perhaps more complicated. In October 1961, Jawaharlal Nehru instituted the National Integration Conference to discuss how to move the nation beyond communalism, casteism regionalism and linguism. The conference recommended the formation of the National Integration Council, which met intermittently 12 times until 1992. Manmohan Singh reconvened it in 2005, since when it has met four times.

In the first council, two future prime ministers, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Indira Gandhi, shared space as members of the committee for national integration and communalism. Vajpayee remained involved with the council until 2005, when it was reconvened. Nehru asked CP Ramaswami Iyer, former Diwan of Travancore who had lobbied for its greater autonomy before Partition, to chair the committee on regional and separatist movements. Actor and director Prithviraj Kapoor became the chairperson of the first committee on mass media.

The councils came up with some concrete suggestions, particularly in the field of education. They recommended, for instance, the daily singing of the national anthem in schools and that textbooks should be written at a national, not state level. They even suggested that history should be taught as a composite culture to let children take pride in their past.

Most of their recommendations, however, were vague. In 1986, the sixth council said that people guilty of disruptive acts should be punished, which was an irony considering many of the Congress thugs who led the massacre of Sikhs just two years before that still remain at large. The 10th council in 1990 called for a resolution to the Ram Janmabhoomi and Babri Masjid issue by asking religious leaders to meet. They repeated this call again in 1992, but failed disastrously.

The most visible results of India's experiments with national integration came in the field of mass media propaganda. Over the years the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity collaborated with the Films Division, Prasar Bharati, Doordarshan and All India Radio to reinforce in songs, jingles and videos the true meaning of being Indian.

Some of India's earliest animators worked with the Films Division to promote national integration.

Tree of Unity (1972)


Ek Anek Aur Ekta (1974)


Swar Sangam (1981)


In later years, there were also songs.

Saur Mandal Mein Tim Tim


Vijay Vishwa Tiranga Humara


Baje Sargam Har Taraf Se Goonj Bankar Desh Raag


Spread the Light of Freedom