Nehru and the Question of National Identity

Nehru makes a conscious effort to fuse India's cultural past and modern democracy. The loosely imagined idea of India's heterogeneous past is also the basis of Nehru's idea of a national identity. Nehru's self-representation as part outsider and part insider makes him the other within Indian society. Also, crucially for Nehru, historical experiences form the only ground through which a national identity can be understood and defined.