The Idea of India By

Sunil Khilnani05/02/2023 1

Sunil Khilnani(born,Prof. Sunil Khilnani

Political Scientist

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The Idea of India• Sunil Khilnani was born in New Delhi and grew up

in India, the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia.

• He earned his graduation from Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1983 and PhD in Social and Political Sciences from King’s College, Cambridge in 1987.

• He began his career as a lecturer in 1989 and went on to become a Senior Lecturer, Reader, and then Professor of Political Science at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2000.

• He is the Governor of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Trust, and has been awarded Parvasi Bharatiya Samman by the Indian Government in 2005. (Prof.Vinod Kumar)

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The Idea of India Khilnani’s monumental thesis on

India, ‘The Idea of India’ was published in 1997.

• Khilnani’s book is focused on India as an idea on different stages of history.

• Khilnani writes that the India known to us is the result of various ideas prevailing at particular times, and he claims to trace the history of this idea from pre-independence and Nehruvian nationalism to the neo-liberal state of 1990s.

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The Idea of India• The ideological formation of India

undergoes a major transformation in the 1990s as the country’s political elite rapidly turns away from the socialist past to embrace neo-liberal capitalism.

• So, this book is the result of present historical and material conditions of the time. Khilnani provides the bridge between the nationalist and socialist ideological formation of India on the one hand and the later neo-liberal capitalist formations on the other.

• The Book “The Idea of India” is divided into four Sections/Chapters.

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The Idea of India• In the first section named 'democracy',

Khilnani talks about how India transformed into a democracy and he presents a timeline which starts from British Raj.

• In the second section titled "temples of the future", the discussion is on the economic policies and their achievements since independence till 1997.

• The third section is devoted to the development of Indian cities, the seats of colonial power.

• In the fourth section, the author tries to find the answer to "Who is an Indian." 

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• Khilnani says “Nehru’s regime was able to install a layered pluralistic definition of Indianness, one which he saw as the end culmination of a millennia of historical mixing and cultural fusion. Unlike German or Italian nationalism which saw the state as the response or

The Idea of India

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The Idea of India result of the struggle

towards a common ethnic identity, Nehru felt that Indian nationalism and an Indian identity could only emerge within the territorial and institutional framework of a state.

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• This Nehruvian model protected and celebrated linguistic, religious, and cultural differences, rather than imposing a uniform Indianness. Nehru’s model also saw colonialism as having added the layer of modernity to the ancient Indian palimpsest, as opposed to other models which saw colonialism as a defiling of Indian identity”.(pg.166).

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The Idea of India• The question of Indian identity or

Indian nationalism is not similar to the general meaning of the terms. It is a quite unique feature in world politics.

• India is pluralistic from pre-historic time.

• India became a political state only when the British colonial rulers passed an Act. in this regard in their parliament in 1899.

• Prior to that, India was just a cultural identity in the geographical plane of south-asia.

• For this reason Pt.Nehru called indianness of the Indians as psychological and cultural entity instead of being a political one, as envisaged in the rest of the world.

• “Unity amidst diversity” is the hall-mark of Indianness of the Indians.

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• In Nehru’s India, Indianness was not defined as a singular or exhaustive identity, but one which recognized linguistic and cultural markers. This layered Indianness meant a single majoritarian definition of Indianness couldn’t emerge. (pg.175)

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Who is an Indian?• “She was like ancient

palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously. All of these had existed in our conscious or subconscious selves, though we may not have been aware of them. And they have gone to build up the complex mysterious personality of india.”-Nehru, The Discovery of India.

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Who is an Indian?• In India the sense of regional

identity (Bengal, Maharashtra, etc.) only came into being as Indians tried to define a national identity.

• Indian nationalism did not unite or subordinate established regional identities.

• A sense of nation and region emerged together, through parallel self-definition. (Page.153)

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Who is an Indian?• What made possible the self-invention of a national

community was the fact of alien conquest and colonial

subjugation.

• It was the British interest in determining geographical

boundaries that by an act of parliament in 1899

converted ‘India’ from the name of a cultural region into a

precise territory.(pg.155)

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Who is an Indian?• Nehru’s regime was able to install a

layered pluralistic definition of Indianness, one which he saw as the end culmination of a millennia of historical mixing and cultural fusion.

• Unlike German or Italian nationalism which saw the state as the response or result of the struggle towards a common ethnic identity, Nehru felt that Indian nationalism and an Indian identity could only emerge within the territorial and institutional framework of a state.

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Who is an Indian?• This Nehruvian model protected and

celebrated linguistic, religious, and cultural differences, rather than imposing a uniform Indianness.

• This Nehru’s model also saw colonialism as having added the layer of modernity to the ancient Indian palimpsest, as opposed to other models which saw colonialism as a defiling of Indian identity.(pg.166).

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Who is an Indian? The possible basis for a common

community was argued with ingenuity and imagination in the vernacular languages, especially in regions like Bengal and Maharashtra that had been exposed longest to the British, where a sense of regional identity only came into being as people tried to define a larger ‘Indian’ community.

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Who is an Indian?• The belief that Indian nationalism had

subsequently to unite and subordinate these regional identities is thus a curious misreading of the relationship between nation and region in India.

• In fact, a sense of region and nation emerged together, through parallel self-definitions – and this point is essential to any understanding of the distinctive, layered character of Indian-ness.” (153)

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Who is an Indian?

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Who is an Indian?• The author heaped lavish praise on

Jawaharlal Nehru for his thoughts. • In the first part of the chapter Khilnani

reminds his readers of Ayodha and goes on to say: “By the 199os,defintions of Indian-ness were in fierce contest once again: Hindu nationalists struggled to capture the state and to purge the nationalist imagination, leaving it homogenous, exclusive and Hindu; others fought to escape the Indian state altogether and to create their own smaller, homogenous and equally exclusive communities.” (152)

•

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Who is an Indian?• The second section of this Chapter

depicts the rise of ‘nationalism’ as a concept.

• Firstly he rejects the “sentimental” view that nationalism as an ideology began in Bengal in the nineteenth-century to culminate in the freedom-struggle and independence itself.

• He asserts rather a more complex rise of nationalism, depicting multiple points of view that go beyond Congress and political jargon to the recognition of regional identities visa vi national identity.

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Who is an Indian?• Khilnani says, 'Indian nationalism’ is

a somewhat misleading shorthand phrase to describe a remarkable era of intellectual and cultural ferment and experimentation inaugurated in the late nineteenth century.

• The various, often oblique, currents that constituted this phase extended well beyond the confines of a political movement such as the Congress, with its high political, bilingual discourse”.

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Who is an Indian?

Gandhiji & Ambedkar

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Who is an Indian?

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Who is an Indian?

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The Idea of India•  It is a very poetic and well written exploration of

the question of Indian Identity. While Khilnani doesn't offer much in the form of new theories on what this definition should be, he very evocatively sets forth the many identities that have and continue to define the vast nation. The discussion on Nehru and Gandhi is exceptional in their clarity and the unreserved take on Hindutva deserves to be read with great attention. The last chapter rises to a poetic crescendo with Khilnani offering his own conceptions on how these various identities should be interpreted and accepted. The stunning bibliographic essay which lists close to 200 odd books is a treasure trove and may provide an enormous and intimidating list of books that should be explored by an interested reader. 

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Who is an Indian? References & Links:-i. ‘The idea of India’(1997) by Sunil Khilnaniii.Introduction to ‘The idea of India’ (2003) edition by Sunil Khilnaniiii.Sunil Khilnani’s Idea of India: an Ideological critique by Prof.Vinod

Kumar published in ‘The Criterion 'an International Journal/ Dated. December2013,Vol.4 Issue-VI.

iv. Images :Google imagev.The Discovery of India by Pt.Jawaharlal Nehru[All resources are taken from internet public domain contents. C & C

modules obliged. Presenter:-

Indranil Sarkar

Sapatgram,Assam

PIN-783337

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