Anxieties and Visions of National Identity

This paper explores the anxiety about an impending crisis of Indian national identity expressed in the contest over the phrase 'the idea of India' in public and political spheres in 21st century Indian politics. The paper limits itself to exploring the sense of the crisis and the anxiety surrounding it as expressed by public intellectuals and political formations, in the use of the phrase idea of India. Within this limit, the paper is further focused on exploring the cultural and representational dimension of Indian national identity and its sense of unity. The introduction plots contemporary political developments and anxieties that have animated the contest over the idea of India, followed by a section that maps conceptual issues by understanding the different uses this phrase has been put to in the last two decades. The next section summarizes the major paradigms of Indian identity and unity that have emerged in Indian politics in the last hundred years and have been influential. The final section explores the uses of the idea of India in contemporary Indian politics by focusing on the recent public articulations of the phrase by a leading politician Rahul Gandhi

Aesthetics · Art · CONTEST · Humanities · National identity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Vision · Anthropology · Indian Economic and Social Development · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts