Secular-nationalism, as the hitherto ruling ideology of the postcolonial Indian state and elite, represents a specific, historically constituted, ideological configuration. The 1980s witnessed the explosion of what is loosely called 'identity politics' and with it a crisis in the ideology. This book is the first to explicitly examine this. With the emergence of new political assertions like feminism and Dalit politics on the one hand, and the rise of Hindu ...