Does India exist? A strange, redundant sort of inquiry, on the face of
it. After all, there the gigantic place manifestly is, a rough
diamond two thousand miles long and more or less as wide, as large as
Europe though you'd never guess it from the Mercator projection,
populated by about a sixth of the human race, home of the largest film
industry on earth, spawning Festivals the world over, famous as the
`world's biggest democracy'. Does India exist? If it doesn't, what's
keeping Pakistan and Bangladesh apart?

	-- Salman Rushdie, "The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987"