For a Just Republic

Reviews / Votes

This is a pathbreaking contribution to understanding Indian politics. Chatterjee's innovative ideas, including his account of the regionally diverse imaginings of the nation expressed in local print languages, will have major implications for rethinking Indian nationalism, the "idea of India," Indian federalism, minority rights, and many other crucial topics. -- Pranab Bardhan, distinguished professor emeritus of economics, University of California, Berkeley [For a Just Republic] combines huge breadth, striking analytical sharpness and a sustained focus on an absolutely key question in the politics of modern India and federal states across the world. In the present moment, it is a book that scholars and the serious general reader alike will want to reach for and to read. -- Rosalind O'Hanlon, professor emeritus of Indian history and culture, University of Oxford, <i>Scroll</i> For a Just Republic is a summa that opens up a new world of just politics for the people-nation. Partha Chatterjee, the preeminent theorist of nation, offers a profound rethinking of democratic practice, with a vision of a just coalition politics stretching across region, language, culture, and even history. A theoretical and analytical masterpiece. -- Manan Ahmed Asif, professor of history, Columbia University For a Just Republic is another brilliant chapter in Chatterjee's exemplary political anatomy of India. Sovereign, centrist powers of the nation-state, he argues, ride roughshod over the regional rights of the nation-people whose "vernacular" lifeworlds resist being subjected to a homogenous and hortatory "idea" of India. This classic work of political philology touches the raw nerve of India's dilemmas today, and yesterday: Are Indians fated to choose between "soft Hindutva and hard Hindutva"? Must "the largest democracy in the world" suffer long cycles of authoritarian misrule? -- Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University For a Just Republic is a book that arrives at a moment of crisis and speaks directly to it. It insists that another India - more just, more attentive to its own plurality - remains possible. Whether we have the political will to build it is another matter entirely. -- Amritesh Mukherjee * The Telegraph * Partha Chatterjee's new book will change the way we study Indian politics.... You cannot now write about Indian politics without reference to For a Just Republic. You cannot ask questions about Indian politics without keeping Chatterjee at the back of your mind. That is the hallmark of a great book. -- Yogendra Yadav * The Indian Express * This book is a striking example of Partha Chatterjee's inspiring style of building theory through granular histories and elements of contemporary politics. -- Nivedita Menon * The Wire *