Narrating India in/and the World

In contrast with its postcolonial “narratives of the global” aiming at the realization of an anti-colonial and non-nuclear One World, India appeared in the past three decades to have favored more familiar precepts of power and influence, notably via its 1998 decision to declare itself a nuclear state. The liberal and secular legacy of Gandhi and Nehru has apparently also given way to the rise of an illiberal domestic social movement seeking to identify India as a Hindu majoritarian nation. Such an account, however, overlooks the complexity of both the origins and the relative influence of dominant streams of thinking about India and the world. It also obscures the deeply ambivalent relations of India with the world, mixing desire and outrage, and where the idea of (a great) civilization has been a primary axis of reference. The ambivalence also reflects an unresolved tension between global and territorial/national claims.