Culture, Politics and Identities: Debating the idea of Indian Nationalism

Abstract

India, like all other societies, has always experienced changes within social structure and of the structure. In both colonial and post colonial periods, India has experienced rapid changes and transformation in the sphere of identity formation in terms of caste, language, religion and region and so on. Hugely diverse populations that India was had to put up a united fight in freedom movement and even in post-colonial India the debates on identity, cultural autonomy, and on top of all nationalism have not subsided. The question of Indian nationalism has been debated by the stalwarts of India’s intellectual tradition like Gandhi, Tagore, Nehru, Ambedkar and Savarkar. In this paper an attempt has been made to revisit the nationalism debate in India.