Modernity and Politics in India

Abstract

This chapter suggests that conventional theoretical models about structure of modernity and its historical extension across world are faulty; to understand historical unfolding of modernity, especially in non-Western world, these theories need some revision. It illustrates this point by analyzing role of the political in India's modernity. The state is utterly central to story of modernity in India. It is not merely one of institutions that modernity brings with it, for all institutions in a sense come through state and its selective mediation. Interestingly, some of intellectual and organizational techniques of modern disciplinary power were enthusiastically embraced by new Indian elites. To nationalist Indians, combination of instrumentality and emotion in modern nation-state had always appeared to be secret of British power, and it was essential to understand and replicate it.