This important volume of original essays interrogates contemporary debates, popular as well as academic, on the place of communities and cultural identities in India's polity. In particular the contributors:

- analyse some of the emerging concerns in the social and political life of contemporary India

- deal with issues that are central to recent debates among social and political theorists, that is, community, identity, nation and civil society

- present fresh perspectives on these issues which are of interest to most developing societies