Author Description

In colonialist writing, "communalism" is a concept that stands for the puerile and the primitive--for all that colonialism itself, in its own reckoning, was not. It is therefore paradoxical that the use of this concept has been propagated, more than anyone else, by nationalists and opponents of colonialism. In this radically new analysis of the problem of communalism in India, the author therefore has as much to say about nationalism as about colonialism. He argues that both these concepts are products of the Age of Colonialism, of Reason, and of Capital. His investigation of communalism is part of a larger exercise aimed at understanding the construction of Indian society and politics as a whole in recent times.