Political developments in the country in recent months have ignited strange passions. Questions that many thought had been settled once and for all have been reopened and debated in the public space revealing differences of opinion that appear to be too fundamental to be easily bridged.The anger and bitterness separating those on opposite sides of the political divide have erupted repeatedly into open violence in the immediate past, which only goes to show that we are quite capable of doing to ourselves the damage that we righteously accuse sundry enemies beyond our borders of plotting to inflict upon us.The old questions that have cropped up anew to trouble us so deeply have mostly concerned the constitution of the nation and the rights of its citizen within the polity. For those on one side of the divide, 1947 marked the dawn of a new nation that, though badly mutilated by the Partition and its horrendous consequences, nevertheless offered equal citizenship to all within its territory irrespective of differences of caste, religion, gender and ethnicity to all who swore it loyalty. Having been finally constituted, the future project was to make the nation durable and strong.Also read: The Barbarity of False EquivalenceFor others, Indian Independence remained an unfinished project. Political independence having been won, the task remained to restore to greatness an ancient culture and civilisation that had lost much of its glory in later times.For the former, Indian political culture was plural; for the latter, monolithic, which meant that in order to be truly, fully, Indian, one had to conform to the dictates of the unitary culture.What is noticeable in the midst of the tumult is that both warring sides have repeatedly turned to the past and summoned history to help buttress their arguments – a position that is perhaps understandable considering that modern history writing in India is inextricably tangled with the journey of the nation-state. It was in the interests of building a nation that we turned to the past in order to legitimise our search for an identity in the present.So ‘facts’ from our past have been marshalled to justify the respective positions on the nation. These facts have always been there, free-floating in our pasts, marginalised or even forgotten in our daily lives till we have brought them to life to serve our purposes in the present.For facts, by themselves, mean very little. They are given meaning when framed by a context within the parameters of time and place. In other words, facts come to life when arranged within a story. It is not the facts by themselves that give meaning to the larger story that is our history but the framing narrative that makes the facts relevant because the story then has a beginning, a middle and an end.Also read: We Need to Dig Trenches Before Phase Two of State Terror Is UnleashedFrom where and when do we begin to tell the story of our nation? From when, clothed in the mists of antiquity, there emerged the first peoples and made their homes on the territory that became later, much later, the nation we call India?We could also begin from the time of the great and early civilisations whose contributions to humanity have made us proud to be called their descendants. Then there are the myriad stories of wanderings, migrations and entry of so many different peoples into this fascinating land.The stories are endless but nevertheless relevant in different ways because they all contribute to telling the larger story of the nation that came to be. Perhaps there would have been no nation like the one we now know without these prior stories. The framing narrative could encompass so many different periods or so many varying landscapes, all depending on the story we wish to tell. A grand one with motifs of passion – love, ardor, sufferings, a story of human frailties, human mistakes but also of human sacrifice and greatness, creative imaginations and unbounded aspirations, a story of humanity through the ages.Such stories would encourage us to conserve the riches that have come to us, to contribute to the richness with our own efforts in the present and also to hand down proud memories from times immemorial to those who come after us. Such a history could inspire us to become better than we are through the encouragement it provides to mould ourselves into the images that the stories provide.Also read: Majoritarianism Has Turned the Populace Into an Ever-Ready MobOr we could tell a much more depressing story, which in the guise of regeneration and conservation becomes a tale of poverty and loss, the richness of the human tapestry fading because we could not tell a grander tale, and searching only for motifs of destruction and plunder ended up baying for revenge.There are different ways of thinking about the past. The past gives us the freedom to do so. After so many years of living as proud citizens of a free country, we ought to be confident enough to tell a story that is not hampered by the constraining framework of what the nation-state is and who it belongs to. That question was settled decades ago. The fact that the nation-state could withstand so much and yet survive shows that the answers were not all wrong. The nation-state is now a given. It is time to move on.The nation however, is much more than just a state. It can be imagined in so many ways. Its very complexity makes it a potential fount of inexhaustible stories that enlighten and enrich us. Why not tell new stories of human-ness rather than go nitpicking a fascinating story that has already been told. It is time for new creative imaginings about our nation.Shukla Sanyal is Nurul Hassan Professor of History at Calcutta University.