"The Imaginary Institution of India is the first major collection of Sudipta Kaviraj's essays and as such, will be received with great curiosity and attention."-Sanjay Subrahmanyam, University of California, Los Angeles --

The essays in this volume, which lie at the intersection of the study of literature, social theory, and intellectual history, locate serious reflections on modernity's complexities in the vibrant currents of modern Indian literature, ...

This study argues that the Bengali novelist Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay produced some of the most searching critical reflections on modernity in colonial India.

This is an urgent methodological provocation for anyone interested in the ethical, conceptual, and political challenges of political thought today.

Paradoxically, this has remained something of a state secret, because Kaviraj s writings have remained scattered in journals difficult to access. The essays in this volume try to approach Indian democracy from different angles.