People lived for millennia in this ancient land, completely unconscious of what it means to be Indian. One pities them, poor souls, for they had not read the German philosopher Heidegger who explained, “consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself”, which clears up the whole issue.I believe that's one of Sartre's. Dasein, the being for whom being is in question, is not consciousness, nor soul.