Delhi & Across the Expanded Nation – Late January 1948
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The world was still choking on the shock of Anirban Sen's broadcast when India itself began to shift under the weight of victory. In foreign capitals, diplomats and clergy debated every syllable of the Prime Minister's proclamation—his unprecedented offer of ₹50k per person for voluntary resettlement to Pakistan or any Arab nation and commonwealth had turned global geopolitics upside down. Arab clerics raged in Cairo and Riyadh, the Vatican shuddered at the threat of losing access to a billion souls, and intelligence agencies whispered that India had subtly redrawn the ideological map of the world without firing a single additional shot.
But within India, these debates were distant thunder. The designer of India's resurrection had already moved on. While foreign powers obsessed over his words, Anirban's focus had shifted to something far grander, far more permanent—the forging of an unassailable Indian dominion that would stand as a colossus across South Asia for generations to come.
The cannon had fallen silent. Pakistan had capitulated. Yet the true battle was only beginning. It would be fought not with brigades and artillery, but with surveyors, civil engineers, administrators, linguists, economists, and the cold precision of bureaucracy. A war of reconstruction, consolidation, and ambition.
Across the newly integrated territories, the tricolor snapped in the winter wind over government buildings where the Pakistani crescent had fluttered just weeks earlier. The scars of war remained—burned walls, broken streets, shattered windows—but the dominant sound was no longer gunfire. It was the rhythmic stomp of Indian boots moving with the purposeful stride of conquerors who had no intention of ever giving an inch back.
In what had once been East Pakistan—now officially rechristened East Bengal Province, restoring its British-era nomenclature with a deliberate calm—General Thimayya's forces fanned out across towns and villages with the practiced efficiency of a closing fist. Dhaka was still tense, the air carrying the lingering smell of smoke and metal, but Indian logistics units had already begun establishing and repuposing the food corridors, medical stations, and administrative outposts.
Captain Mitra walked through a narrow lane outside Dhaka, his rifle slung casually across his chest. Children peered at him from cracked doorways—curious, frightened, uncertain. Women whispered behind windows, torn between fear and relief.
"They're watching us," Mitra murmured to Major Sarkar beside him. "Every step."
"Let them watch," Sarkar replied, adjusting his weapon strap with calm authority. "They need to understand we're not a passing storm. We're the new monsoon. This is Indian soil now—forever."
The challenges were immense. This land spoke a different language, followed different customs, carried its own dreams. The Pakistani army, in retreat, had blown bridges, sabotaged roads, cut telegraph lines(Even INA control the situation but damaged happened)—vengeful destruction in the final hours. But Anirban and Patel had anticipated every obstacle. Their administrators—carefully chosen for their linguistic ability and cultural empathy—moved quietly into villages to restore order, food distribution, and essential services. This was governance as conquest, conquest as governance.
Across the subcontinent, in Lahore, the transformation was far more dramatic. The Mughal capital of artists, saints, and emperors—now the greatest prize in India's crown—throbbed with a different kind of energy. The Sang-e-Marmar walls of Lahore Fort watched silently as bulldozers tore fresh trenches into the earth. Military engineers worked around the clock. Surveyors marked grids. Officers barked orders over the metallic hum of machinery.
From the battlements, Colonel Amarjit Singh surveyed the plains stretching toward what remained of Pakistan. His eyes traced the line that would soon host the most formidable defensive structure on the subcontinent—the Bharat Raksha Deewar, India's Protection Wall. A fortified belt of impregnable concrete and steel that would stretch from Bahawalpur through Multan, Gujrat, Lyallpur, Montgomery, Sialkot, Gurdaspur, Sheikhpura, and Gujranwala.
"No ordinary border," Colonel Singh said as his junior officer joined him. "This… this is a statement carved into the land."
Below them, giant excavators carved the foundation for bunkers and interconnected tunnels. Troops laid transmission cables for communications that would rival the networks of imperial Britain. Watchtower foundations marked intervals planned to monitor even the movement of birds.
"When we finish," Singh continued, "a mouse won't cross from Pakistan without us knowing."
The officer beside him nodded, awestruck. "This is a wall for centuries, sir."
Singh's smile was thin. "And that's the point."
Further south, the Arabian Sea glimmered under the rising sun as the Indian Navy entered Karachi in full formation. Warships flew the tricolor proudly, their hulls slicing through waters that had once carried Pakistan's trade and dreams. Commander Nair stood on the deck of INS Delhi, watching the coastline unfold before him—the skyline, the jetties, the lighthouse, all bearing the echoes of a defeated enemy now under Indian dominion.
"Look at her," he said softly to his deputy. "Karachi. The golden gate to the Arabian Sea."
Indian marine units were already converting the port into a naval fortress unlike anything India had possessed before. Dry docks were requisitioned. Old armories were retrofitted to hold torpedoes and anti-aircraft batteries. Coastal radar stations were being established on the old Manora Fort.
"From here," Nair whispered, "we'll project power all the way to Hormuz."
But while the borders hardened and the seas bristled with Indian steel, Delhi itself prepared for a moment of history. Three days after Pakistan's formal surrender, the Red Fort became the stage for a ceremony no one alive would ever forget.
The sandstone ramparts, which had witnessed the fall of the Mughals, the rise of the British, and the first fragile dawn of independent India, now prepared to welcome something unprecedented: a fully dominant, militarily unchallenged Indian state.
The courtyard overflowed—soldiers coated in dust from Multan and Sindh, PVC volunteers whose haunted eyes had seen the horrors of Partition, civil servants with files under their arms, students who had marched with Anirban's posters during the darkest days of the conflict.
Indira Gandhi sat in the front rows, her face pale but composed, a silent witness to an India her father had not lived to see. She had mourned Nehru's loss in private; now she steeled herself in public. Her gaze remained fixed on Anirban—both wary and fascinated.
When the Prime Minister stepped forward, a hush settled like a veil over the crowd. His presence was magnetic, undeniable—the man who had turned a wounded nation into a rising empire.
"Today," Anirban began, his voice resonant, echoing across the ancient Mughal stones, "we stand not as victims of history, but as its authors."
The crowd leaned forward.
"We honor our soldiers—whose courage was the thunderclap that shattered our enemies' illusions. We honor the Partition Volunteer Corps—men who rose from ash and grief to defend the motherland with unmatched fury."
The PVC units shuddered with pride.
"We honor the sacrifices of Nehru, Azad,… the suffering of Badshah Khan & our moderate leaders… and the martyred soul of Mahatma Gandhi. Their blood has watered the soil from which a new India has risen."
Thunderous applause broke like monsoon rain.
Then came the announcements.
Pensions for all veterans.
Land Lease grants for PVC families.
The National War Heroes Fund.
A permanent transformation of the armed forces.
But the crowd erupted when he declared the formation of two new forces—
the Border Security Force, forged from the most disciplined defenders of the frontier,
and the National Security Guard, an elite unit that would protect India.
As the applause rolled across the courtyard, the sense was unmistakable:
They had witnessed the birth of a new kind of nation.
But night brought sobering realities.
In the Prime Minister's office, Baldev Singh and Vishwajeet Rao Kelkar sat like pallbearers of economic truth. Ledgers lay open like wounds. Columns of numbers twisted like scars across the pages.
"The cost is catastrophic," Kelkar whispered. "1/10th of our reserves have vanished. The new territories will need reconstruction. The Protection Wall will drain resources. BSF deployment, NSG training—Prime Minister, we are bleeding money."
Baldev Singh grimaced. "Ammunition reserves are dangerously low. Equipment worn thin. The western border demands perpetual investment."
"If we continue at this rate," Kelkar added, "the treasury will collapse in 6 months."
For a long moment, Anirban said nothing.
He stared out of the window at the glowing city below—Delhi, beating with life, pride, hope. The people believed in him now more than ever. They had given him victory. They would demand prosperity next.
Finally, he turned back, his voice calm, controlled, deadly sure.
"The first act was security," he said. "Without it, prosperity is a fantasy."
He stepped away from his desk.
"Now begins the second act."
Baldev Singh looked up. "And what is that, Prime Minister?"
Anirban smiled faintly, eyes gleaming with purpose.
"It's time to collect old debts. It's time to claim what has always been ours."
He pressed the bell on his desk.
"Summon Krishna Menon. Summon Saraswati, Chetty, Patelji. Tell them—India is ready to reclaim everything"
As the aide rushed out of the room, Anirban Sen turned back to the window, watching the lights of Delhi flicker like embers of destiny.
History had been written with guns.
The future would be written with leverage.
And India—reborn, ascendant, unshakable—would now decide what the world owed her.
.
.
.
.
The lamps in the Prime Minister's Strategy Chamber burned low that night, their golden light flickering across faces that had already etched their places into the new India's destiny. Outside, Delhi hummed with the feverish activity of a capital now responsible for a subcontinent. Inside, the air was colder—sharper—thick with the tension of choices that would determine not just India's future, but the architecture of the entire Indian Ocean world.
Krishna Menon was the first to break the silence. He rose from his chair, his lean frame casting a long shadow across the war-room map that now showed India stretching from the Afghan frontier to the Bay of Bengal, from the Karakoram to the shores of occupied Karachi.
"Prime Minister," Menon began, tapping a pointer against the map, "the British sterling balances can be milked far more intelligently than simple repayment. Britain is still bleeding from the war. They owe us, yes—but debt is only one form of leverage, if we can't leverage it properly then it will be our stupidity"
Anirban leaned back, fingers steepled against his face. "Go on."
Menon's pointer moved southwest toward a string of tiny dots scattered across the blue expanse of the Indian Ocean.
"The Maldives," he said. "Mauritius. And Chagos Archipelago."
Sardar Patel looked up at that. His eyes narrowed, calculating. "You want to take them?"
"I want us to inherit them," Menon corrected. "As Britain's ability to govern erodes, they'll want to hand over responsibility. The Royal Navy is shrinking. Their colonial office is drowning. These islands are more liability than asset."
Saraswati smirked. "But they still won't give them for free."
"No," Menon agreed. "But that's where sterling balance leverage comes in. We let them keep a portion of what they owe—call it a debt offset—and in return, they quietly transfer administrative control. No public embarrassment for London. No accusation of retreat."
Patel's approval was immediate. "We secure the entire Central Indian Ocean. No foreign base. No colonial interference. And Chagos… that's a naval chokepoint."
Ajay Dubey the aide to Anirban and also Chief Of DESI that only few people know, standing near the wall like a silent sentinel, added quietly: "And If we don't take Chagos, the Americans will."
The room fell silent.
They all knew he was right.
Anirban broke the silence. "Approved. Mauritius, Maldives, Chagos—prepare diplomatic channels. No drama. No headlines."
Menon nodded.
"But there's more," he continued, his tone shifting to something heavier. "Ceylon."
Patel raised an eyebrow. "Not independent yet."
"Exactly," Menon said. "They will be—in eleven days." He pointed at the calendar on the wall: January 24, 1948.
And Ceylon's scheduled independence: February 4, 1948
Ajay stepped forward, voice low but urgent. "Sir, my intelligence reports from Colombo are disturbing. Merchants, plantation owners, and Tamil labor unions speak of rising ethnic tensions. There are whispers—violent whispers."
Anirban frowned. "Civil war?"
"Not yet," Dubey said. "But inevitable. And after our win in this WAR, The Sinhalese are pushing a Sinhala-Only ideology. The Tamils fear annihilation, there is already rising cases of Violent riots. And foreign powers—especially the British, and later the Americans—will use that instability to undermine our southern flank."
He paused.
"If a civil war erupts, we will be forced into intervention eventually. And once we enter, it won't be easy to leave."
Menon nodded vigorously. "Prevention is better than reaction."
Patel folded his hands behind his back. "A fractured Ceylon means South will dragged into chaos. Refugee waves. Smugglers. Foreign missionaries exploiting the vacuum. The Arab League funding clerics. The Vatican trying to 'save' the island. Endless headaches."
Chetty, always the quiet financial brain of the cabinet, added: "And whoever controls Ceylon controls the sea lanes below India."
Dubey leaned closer. "Prime Minister, I believe we should turn Ceylon into a Protectorate. Fast. Make them see reason. We offer stability. Infrastructure. Protection. And in return—they hold off announcing independence."
He hesitated.
"And later... in a year or two, once stabilized, they can be merged."
Anirban exhaled softly. "Eleven days…"And cursed in his mind 'This Damn Butterfly Effect
Saraswati's lips curled. "A hectic January indeed."
Anirban looked around the room. "Begin. Quiet diplomatic talks. Through plantation networks, Tamil elites, Ceylonese moderates. If Colombo hesitates—remind them Burma is burning already."
Dubey nodded. "Speaking of Burma… insurgencies are already starting. Especially by Rohingya militants in Arakan, & Karen, Shan militant groups. And Sir as per your orders, we've established relief camps under our new Embassy in Rangoon."
Patel muttered, "The entire arc from Karachi to Colombo is unstable."
"And we," Anirban said, "will stabilize it by Shyam-Dyam-Dhondo-Bhed"
He massaged his temples, fatigue finally visible beneath the iron.
Then Saraswati leaned forward with a sly smile.
"There's another matter… Prime Minister, perhaps more urgent than islands and protectorates."
Anirban raised an eyebrow. "Which is?"
"Machinery. Specifically—British machinery."
She flipped open a dossier.
"They're sitting on mountains of unused WWII equipment. Tanks, artillery, trucks, aircraft parts, engines, radio systems—worth millions. And their Treasury is desperate."
Kelkar whispered, "They'll practically beg us to take them."
Saraswati nodded. "Construction machinery too. Cranes, lathes, earthmovers, steamrollers. The British don't need them now—but we do. Imagine what this equipment could do for our infrastructure."
Anirban slowly smiled. "A shortcut to modernization."
"Not a shortcut," Saraswati corrected. "A decade of industrialization—compressed into two years. Because you gentlemen already saw, how the junk we acquire from USA, Japan, etc., were repurpose by our INCOSPAR, DRDO, CSIR scientist, enabling us to help ourselves in a very large margin, while the West believe we were only buying junk that they phase out after WWII"
Menon added, "Yes sir and we don't even have to pay 1/11th price like previous contract when we acquire those things from them. Here we will offer debt offset. They get relief. We get machines that will supercharge our R&D. ln a cost of fraction. Tanks to study armor plating. Aircraft engines for aviation design. Radio sets for comms research. Artillery for metallurgy labs. etc"
Patel nodded. "Sensible. Ethical. And brutally effective."
"Agreed," Anirban said. "We will acquire everything, Leave them nothing but empty warehouses."
They all laughed.
Then Saraswati spoke, placing a new file on the table.
"Now, petroleum."
Everyone froze.
India had beaten Pakistan. Built a wall. Captured Karachi. Seized Kashmir. Yet petroleum… petroleum remained the blood that would power the new India. And India barely had any.
"We cannot build a superpower on empty oil tanks," Chetty said gravely. "Our reserves are limited. You see that during the war we have to send our entire Digboi production to the Army that we just nationalize in September, and Our consumption will only skyrocket in future."
Saraswati leaned forward. "Which is why I propose we create two new institutions:
ONGC — Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and BA — Bharat Airways
Both under NIIF."
She continued.
"ONGC will seek minority stakes in British Petroleum companies. Even 5% will give us technical access—refining processes, drilling methods, petrochemical knowledge."
Menon added, "Britain's Anglo-Iranian is the greatest petroleum empire on earth after Rockefeller's Oil empire. A minority stake gives us access to their training, geological surveys, and engineering expertise."
"And BA?" Anirban asked.
"BA..um,," Saraswati said, "Well, BOAC and BEA is the key to global aviation. Routes. Training academies. Navigation systems. Cabin crew training. If Bharat Airways owns even 5% of BOAC and BEA, India gains aviation doctrine overnight."
[•Well BOAC is Predecessor of Modern British Airways, BA form with the merger of BOAC and BEA(The British European Airways]
Dubey nodded. "Strategically—BOAC,BEA stake means our future airlines won't stumble in the dark. They'll begin at global standards."
Kelkar added, "And we will also gain say in Future BOAC and BEA's successor; every stake now compounds into future power."
Anirban's eyes sharpened.
"But ONGC?"
Saraswati answered with a single sentence.
"If we control Oil fields abroad and Refining Infrastructure in india, India will never starve for oil."
Then Anirban mind race against time and he remembered the timeline of Iranian Nationalization that happen in 1951.
.
He then say," I don't think it is the right time for acquiring stakes in British petroleum companies. In just two or one year the the price of those companies' stakes will crash, then we will exercise our option regarding this"
No one said anything because they know even, if it didn't not happen naturally, Anirban possessed the means to artificially create the reason for that crash to happen.
Then anirban leaned back, absorbing it all.
Chagos.
Mauritius.
Maldives.
Ceylon Protectorate.
Burma crisis.
British WWII machinery.
ONGC.
Bharat Airways.
BOAC,BEA & BP stakes.
India was no longer building a nation.
India was building an empire of influence.
Finally, he spoke.
"BOAC stake—approved.
Bharat Airways—approved.
ONGC—approved."
Saraswati smiled in triumph.
" BP stakes…" Anirban continued softly, "we wait."
He rose from his chair.
"When British Petroleum Companies crash, when they collapse. They will have only one option to sell us the world's treasure at the price of peanuts."
Patel grinned.
Anirban walked to the window, staring at the moonlit skyline of Delhi—capital of a nation reborn.
"Begin draft writing quietly. Protectorate arrangements. Machinery acquisition. BOAC,BEA buying. Permanent Indian Ocean presence."
He looked back at his inner circle.
"And now… let us begin the great reclaiming from World."
The room trembled with the weight of that sentence.
Across the world, Everyone will soon learn that the "World" would no longer be safe from the rising power of Bharat.
And the empire that once carved India apart would now pay its debts—not only in coin, but in machinery, islands, knowledge, power and history.