The idea of India - Sunil Khilnani

India, an ancient civilization, is fifty years old this year. In 1947 the British divided and left their most prized imperial possession, handing over the state they had created to a small nationalist elite. Led by Nehru, this elite was driven by a belief in a political construct: the idea of India. This principle animated the efforts to unite a huge, diverse, and poor society and transform it into a modern state. It joined what was seen as the inexhaustible movement of world history. This book is about the paradoxes and ironies that have surrounded this project of self-fashioning — a project which has brought India to the verge of becoming a major Asian presence, and which has given Indians real political freedoms, but one which continues to leave most of them in poverty, and which is now threatened by religious nationalism.

At the heart of India's historical experience lies politics. Once a society structured by fixed hierarchies, India is today the most intensely political society in the world. The continuous presence of democracy has opened its society to history in quite unprecedented ways. This brilliant historical essay conveys the urgency, fluidity, and unpredictability of modern India, with chapters on its democracy, on visions of economic development, on its diverse cities and on the current disputes about its political identity. These themes are used to provoke and illuminate a fundamental question: can the original idea of India survive its own successes?