The Indian Ideology

Partha Chatterjee, Sudipta Kaviraj and Nivedita Menon

Orient BlackSwan

176 pages,Rs. 495

In The Indian Ideology, the Marxist historian Perry Anderson attacked subcontinental unity as a myth, castigated Gandhi for infusing Indian nationalism with Hindu religiosity, and blamed the Congress Party for Partition. These three essays systematically critique the intellectual foundations of Anderson’s political analysis. Menon exposes his failure to engage with feminist, Marxist and Dalit scholarship. Chatterjee studies key historical episodes to counter the “Great Men” view of history. Kaviraj contends that reductive Orientalist tropes, such as those Anderson deploys, frequently mar European analyses of non-European contexts.