Reborn in 1914: I Will Build India into a Superpower

It was around this time that his thinking began to harden. It was not sudden or even conscious, but the reality accumulated and forced a shift.

He saw the British administration operating with calculated restraint, intervening just enough to maintain control, allowing tensions to surface just enough to weaken unified opposition. Policies acknowledged differences, then formalised them, embedding division within governance.

At the same time, he observed the responses within Indian society, how quickly communities organised along lines of identity, how easily grievances translated into hostility, how often retaliation mirrored the initial act.

The pattern repeated in different places, under different circumstances, but with the same structure.

Ram began to interpret this not merely as political conflict, but as something deeper, something embedded in belief systems, in historical memory, in the way identity was constructed and defended.

His conclusions formed privately, shaped by both observation and the fragments of memory he carried from another life. He recalled, not clearly but with enough certainty, the scale of violence that would one day accompany division.

Direct Action Day, Noakhali, partition, people who left everything, boarding trains to India and arriving as corpses. Fathers hacked, burned alive, mothers giving poison to their daughters. The retaliations. Punjab and Bengal bore the brunt of actual violence, but no one was untouched by it, even in the India of his memories. And worse still, the distrust had not dissipated, but accumulated. Fomented by politicians, sure, but it was there already.

After living 20 years in this timeline, Ram had arrived at a conclusion. Perhaps, some would call it erroneous, but Ram believed that action, even if in the wrong direction, would always be better than inaction. His conclusion:

Non-Abrahamic faiths are, by their very nature, incompatible with Abrahamic faiths. Abrahamic faiths rely on conquest; their believers’ loyalty lies with a foreign believer rather than their co-ethnic non-believers. Even in the timeline of my memories, there was widespread predatory proselytisation, which was just one of the reasons fault lines never mended.

If partition is inevitable, then I would propose a total population transfer. Perhaps that way, the people who died in my time could be saved. Furthermore, to unite at least the Hindus, a militia needs to be created, funded, and armed. Perhaps that way, the evil of casteism and violent mob action during partition can be minimised. His thoughts began to increasingly lead toward this particular avenue.

His decision made, Ram decided to contact some trusted Marwari community traders through his uncle, leveraging family ties, to reach out to the scattered revolutionaries for the training of a Traders’ Security Force. The traders would employ the militia, oversee their training, ensure no caste-based discrimination occurs, and perhaps, by educating people in Sanskrit and their shared heritage, bind people with an idea bigger than just identities.

At first, it was only an adjustment in thinking, an acknowledgement that the threats he perceived were not confined to colonial rule. Then it became planning.

The temple basement continued to function, but it was no longer sufficient. Production increased gradually, carefully calibrated to avoid detection. Additional locations were identified: unused storage spaces, abandoned buildings, properties held by trusted members of the Marwari network.

Each location served a specific function; no single site held complete operations. Ram ensured compartmentalisation; if one part failed, the rest would remain intact.

The workers adapted as well.

They were no longer just labourers performing isolated tasks. Over time, a small number of them were trained more extensively, not enough to replicate the entire process independently, but enough to maintain consistency in critical stages.

Ram selected them carefully. Reliability mattered more than skill. Skill could be developed. Trust could not. He also implemented his proposal at home, so to speak. Banning the practise of untouchability and caste-based discrimination outright.

Some of his people left; Ram paid them no mind, just ensuring that they could not jeopardise the whole movement, his excellent relations with his workers’ families ensuring that. With an added layer of security implemented by registering the temple as a mental health facility, which would discredit their claims with the British.

Those who remained, Ram taught them Sanskrit in early mornings and late evenings. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata have always been revered by all Hindus. Ram took advantage of this and taught his people to see themselves as more than just their caste, their village, but as Indians, children of Bharat Mata.

Distribution networks expanded quietly.

Through established Marwari channels, weapons moved alongside legitimate goods, hidden not through elaborate concealment, but through familiarity. Trade routes that had existed for decades, even centuries, provided cover more effective than secrecy.

Beyond these networks, Ram began to establish connections with individuals whose concerns aligned with his own. Through intermediaries, he reached figures like Batukeshwar Dutt and Syama Prasad Mukherjee, not in formal alliance, but in shared understanding.

These connections were not public.

They did not need to be.

His weapons and ideas would reach from Assam to Sindh.

In 1933, the pamphlet by Choudhry Rahmat Ali reached him through one such network.

He read it in the dim light of the temple basement, the paper slightly rough under his fingers, the ink uneven in places. The term it introduced, Pakistan, was unfamiliar, almost abstract. The argument, however, was not.

A separate nation defined by religious identity.

At first glance, it seemed impractical. At second glance, tempered by knowledge, it seemed inevitable. Ram folded the pamphlet carefully and set it aside.

Ideas, he knew, did not require immediate acceptance to take root.

Daily life continued in parallel, creating a dissonance that Ram felt increasingly.

At the university, examinations were scheduled, students prepared, results discussed. In the markets, bargaining continued with its usual intensity. Festivals were observed with the same rituals, the same gatherings, the same outward unity.

Yet beneath it all, the fractures widened.

Ram moved through these spaces with an awareness that separated him from others.

He saw continuity. He also saw its limits.

At home, the final shift came quietly.

Vidya Devi had been withdrawing for months, but her illness marked a transition from absence to decline. She ate less, spoke less, spent long hours lying in a room that had grown dim from disuse. The house, once defined by routine, now felt suspended.

Ram adjusted his schedule, returning earlier, when possible, though his work did not diminish. He arranged for a Vaidya, ensured that medicines were administered, that food was prepared in forms she could manage.

Their conversations, when they occurred, were sparse.

One evening, as the light faded and the courtyard settled into quiet, she spoke.

”You are building something,” she said.

It was not a question.

”Yes,” Ram replied.

”For your father?” she asked.

”For what comes after,” he said.

She turned her head slightly, studying him with a clarity that seemed at odds with her physical weakness.

”You cannot build everything,” she said. ”Some things will break despite you.”

”I know, ma. I have not been a good son to you; perhaps I can be one to Bharat ma.” That was the only answer he could give. Her decline was gradual, but its end came without warning.

”You’ve been all we ever wished for.”

One morning, the house remained silent longer than usual. The sounds that marked the beginning of the day, the movement of utensils, the soft rhythm of preparation, did not come.

Ram entered her room.

She lay as she had the night before, just very still. The absence was immediate. Complete.

The rituals that followed unfolded with mechanical precision. Neighbours were informed. Relatives, distant and near, arrived. The body was prepared, carried, and cremated according to custom. Words were spoken, condolences offered, all within the structure that tradition provided.

Ram performed each action as required, without visible grief. Those who observed him might have interpreted this as strength, or perhaps as being an ingrate.

It mattered not.

After the rituals ended and the visitors left, the house returned to silence. But this time, it was not temporary.

Ram sat in the courtyard that evening, the same space where his father had once spoken of history, where his mother had once moved through daily routines with quiet efficiency. The space remained unchanged, but everything within it had altered.

He did not dwell on the loss. Instead, he recalibrated.

With both his parents gone, the last anchor to a life defined by continuity and expectation had been removed. What remained was purpose, self-defined, self-directed, and increasingly detached from conventional structures.

His work expanded accordingly. The production of his scattered workshops increased.

Distribution networks extended further into the Gangetic plains, Bengal, Bihar, the United Provinces, and beyond, through Marwari connections that reached into regions as distant as Madras, Hyderabad, Sindh, Burma.

He did not attempt rapid growth. He avoided visibility. Each expansion was measured, integrated into existing systems before extending further.

At the same time, his engagement with Congress continued, though with a shifting emphasis. He spoke less about immediate political demands and more about structural concerns, unity, cohesion, the risks of fragmentation.

The communal riots that erupted intermittently, in places like Kanpur and elsewhere, reinforced his position. Reports of violence, retaliation, and escalation circulated widely, each incident feeding into the next.

In Congress meetings, he addressed this directly.

”If we do not resolve these divisions,” he said, ”independence will not unify us. It will expose every fault line we have ignored.”

Some agreed. Others dismissed it as secondary. Ram did not argue beyond a point. He had learned that not all conclusions could be reached through debate. Some things required experience.

By the end of 1934, Ram’s world had taken on a clarity that felt both precise and incomplete.

He understood the direction of events. He did not control them.

He had built systems. They might not prove sufficient.

He had anticipated conflict. He could not define its exact form.

And yet, he continued. Because in the absence of certainty, action remained the only constant. Not driven by emotion. Not guided by complete knowledge. But sustained by a single understanding, that what was coming would not wait for preparation.

And so, he prepared anyway.

Location: Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Special Branch, Fort William, Calcutta

December, 1934

The ceiling fan above Captain Arthur Reginald’s desk churned the humid Bengal air, doing little to cool the room or lighten the mood.

Across the desk, Inspector Das laid down three small, identical iron firing pins on a dark velvet tray.

”They were recovered in three different places over the past six months, Captain,” Das said softly. ”The first from a raid on a Bengal Volunteer safehouse in Dacca. The second from a dockside seizure in Chittagong, bound for Rangoon. And the third... from a nationalist cell in Madras.”

Reginald leaned forward, squinting through his spectacles at the tiny metal components. ”Local village blacksmith work?”

”That was our initial assumption,” Das replied, shaking his head. ”Until the ballistics quartermaster in Simla ran an analysis on the steel composition and tooling marks. Captain, these aren’t crude bazaar fabrications. The steel alloy uses a precise tempering process. More importantly, the rifling grooves on barrels recovered in Sindh match the lathe signatures of the receivers seized in Burma.”

Reginald tapped a pencil against his desk, his brow furrowing. ”Sindh, Burma, Madras, Bengal... That isn’t a loose smuggling ring, Inspector. That is an industrial pipeline spanning half the subcontinent.”

”And we can’t find the source,” Das said, opening a ledger filled with chaotic, red-inked supply routes. ”Every time we trace a weapon backwards, the trail dissolves into a maze of shadow channels. A crate of cast iron fittings leaves a hub in the north, passes through three different nameless middlemen, gets relabelled as agricultural machinery parts, and vanishes into legitimate river barges or timber carts.”

Reginald stood up and walked over to the tall windows overlooking the Hooghly River. ”No single shipment carries a complete firearm?”

”Never,” Das confirmed. ”One transport carries springs hidden inside textile bales; another carries forged stocks tucked into grain shipments; a third carries machined pins in hardware crates. They are assembled only at their final destinations by local cells who don’t even know who manufactured the parts.”

”And the funding?” Reginald asked, his voice dropping. ”Who is paying for the steel, the machining, the freight?”

”Informal hundi slips and cash transfers across endless merchant guilds,” Das admitted, a note of frustration breaking through his calm demeanour. ”No single name appears twice. No political manifestos are attached to the crates. Whoever is running this isn’t printing revolutionary pamphlets or making speeches.”

Reginald turned back, a cold prickle of anticipation running down his spine.

”A syndicate that stays quiet is far more dangerous than revolutionaries screaming in the streets, Inspector,” Reginald said, picking up one of the iron pins and holding it up to the light. ”It means whoever is doing this isn’t looking for headlines; they are systematically arming a continent.”

He set the pin down with a quiet clink.

”Form a dedicated task force within Special Branch,” Reginald ordered. ”Monitor every major freight line leaving the northern industrial belts. I don’t care if you have to dismantle ten thousand crates of raw iron, find out where this steel is being forged.”

Unbeknownst to Ram, a file was opened by Arthur Reginald for investigation into his weapons factory.

A/N: A reader suggested adding dates to the Chapters to better understand the timeline and Ram’s age; I was busy today, so I will edit the published Chapters tomorrow.

For now, Ram was born in 1914; as of this Chapter (1933-34), he is 20 years old.

Thank you all for engaging with the story.

Let me know your thoughts. And you can stone me now!