Pakistan, July 10 -- A country does not usually discover a new name on social media. Yet for the last few days, a suggestion by Pakistani history communicator Faisal Warraich turned into something larger than a branding exercise. Warraich proposed that Pakistan consider "Indus" as an alternative civilisational name - not necessarily a replacement for Pakistan, but a way of acknowledging that the country's story did not begin in 1947.

The idea travelled because it touched a nerve. "Islamic Republic of Indus" appeared in posts, memes and arguments. Some treated it as a playful thought experiment. Others heard in it an overdue recovery of a past that official history had often compressed into the arrival of Islam, the Pakistan movement and ...