My subject is popular politics in most of the world. When I say “popular,” I do not necessarily presume any particular institutional form or process of politics. I do, however, suggest that much of the politics I describe is conditioned by the functions and activities of modern governmental systems that have now become part of the expected functions of governments everywhere. These expectations and activities have produced, I will argue, certain relations between governments and populations. The popular politics I will describe grows upon and is shaped by those relations. What I mean by “most of world” will, I hope,...

The classic moment when the promises of enlightened modernity appeared to come together with the universal political aspirations of citizenship within the nation was, of course, the French Revolution. The moment has been celebrated and canonized in numerous ways in the last two hundred years, perhaps most succinctly in the formula, now almost universally acknowledged, of the identity of the people with the nation and, in turn, the identity of the nation with the state. There is no question that the legitimacy of the modern state is now clearly and firmly grounded in a concept of popular sovereignty. This is,...

Let me take you on a quick tour through political society, or at least those parts of it that I am familiar with, because there are many parts about which I know very little.

Our first stop is along the railway tracks that run through the southern part of the city of Calcutta, not far from where I live and work. A major arterial road flies over the tracks. If you stand on the bridge and look in front of you, you will see high-rise apartment blocks, a ritzy shopping mall, and the offices of a major oil company. But...

When I entered Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1964, Professor Susobhan Sarkar had left for Jadavpur University. But he was by then a legend among students of the college. It is my misfortune that as a student and researcher I only saw him a few times from a distance and never had the chance to know him well. But I noticed among my elder historian colleagues the unmistakable imprint of his influence. Although his best known published writings are his essays on the Bengal renaissance,¹ he was really a teacher of European history. Year after year, it was his lectures on...

I consider the attacks carried out in this city on September 11 as heinous and barbaric. I am not one of those who proclaim political nonviolence. As a student of politics in colonial and postcolonial countries, I have become convinced that when the structures of domination in the modern world are so deeply rooted in the ability to deploy massive and efficient violence, it is neither possible nor justified to insist that those who fight against unfair domination must at all times eschew the use of political violence. But I know of no anti-imperialist or anti-colonial politics that will justify...

In view of all that has happened in different parts of South Asia in recent months, it is not easy for us at this moment to apply the cold logic of analytical reasoning and talk dispassionately about the prospects of secularism. It is not a time of normal politics in South Asian countries. In some, Afghanistan for example, civil war and external military intervention have uprooted previously existing political structures. Politics there is still being transacted through warfare and it is too early to tell whether stable foundations are being laid for a new political order. We are told that...

Or, if you prefer, we could exclaim: Are Indian cities becoming bourgeois, alas?

No matter what the underlying sentiment, there are several reasons for asking a question such as this. First, it is evident that there has been in the last decade or so a concerted attempt to clean up the Indian cities, to rid streets and public lands of squatters and encroachers, and to reclaim public spaces for the use of proper citizens. This movement has been propelled by citizens’ groups and staunchly supported by an activist judiciary claiming to defend the rights of citizens to a healthy environment...