Communal Identity in India: Its Construction and Articulation in the Twentieth Century

Series: Debates in Indian History and Society

This collection of seminal essays provides a useful and stimulating introduction to the debates surrounding identity politics in modern India. Through the selected articles, each of which discusses different aspects of the central debate, the volume stresses the need to stay away from an 'essentialist' definition of identity, a view particularly significant in India today; and it concludes that co