Reckoning with a divided India

No matter who wins the Assembly elections, the idea of India has already lost

Does anyone still remember “the idea of India”? The phrase was popularised by the scholar, political scientist and historian, Sunil Khilnani, who wrote an influential book about it in 1997, but the concepts it embodied had been around for much longer.

The best single-para summary of the idea of India that I have come across appeared in an article by Shashi Tharoor. The idea of India, he said, was “the idea of an ever-ever-land emerging from an ancient civilization, united by a shared history, restrained by pluralist democracy. Indian democracy imposes no narrow conformities on its citizens. The whole point of