Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations ix Glossary xi Map 1 Territorial growth of the East India Company, to 1843 xiv Map 2 Contemporary India xv Preface xvi Part I The Invention of Modern India 1 The Light of Asia? India in 1947 3 2 'Sovereign, Democratic, Federal, Socialist, Secular': The Invention of Modern India 20 Part II Contested Modernities 3 The Tall Men' and the Third Way': Nehru, Patel and the Building of Modern India 43 4 Jealous Populism, Crises and Instability: Indira's India 67 5 Drifting Towards Catastrophe: The Powerlessness of the Congress-(I) 93 6 'Elite Revolts': Reforming and Reinventing India in the 1990s 119 Part III The Reinvention of India 7 The Dialectics of Reform: The State and Economic Liberalization 143 8 The Guilty Men? Militant Hinduism and the Politics of Anti-secularism 173 9 Transfers of Power? Subaltern Politics, Sites of Empowerment and the Reshaping of India's Democracy 200 Conclusion 231 Notes 241 References 272 Index 297