Reflections on Indian politics

Indian politics has so far inconoclastically defied all attempts at systematic theorization by scholars, Indian and foreign. The decoding of the complexities of the Indian political system offers no single, coherent frame of reference for a complete understanding. Any objective appraisal of the political processes would depend on deciphering of the political erraticism of a differentiated political culture experiencing the thrust of modernization which, in turn, ought to reckon with the political fluctuations in a total perspective of develop ments over the last decade.

Reflections on Indian Politics is a systematic piecing together of various fragments from my writings of over a decade or so. There is a thematic unity in that the selectivity is confined to the subject of Indian politics. However, the vastness of the field of Indian politics has made it imperative to classify the material into four convenient parts: the mind and politics, the constitution and politics, the elections and politics and the sub-continent and politics. Thus, the various facets of a wide phenomenon have been covered in one volume.

A collection of this nature cannot be claimed as either a research work or a text book. It falls in bet ween the two. But more, it is an objective assessment and evaluation of different situations and developments in the Indian political system. The effort here is largely to penetrate into the contradictory view-points by an impersonal approach and a philosophic disposition, The book gives: an up-to-date rendering of the doctrines that have shaped Indian political character, the framework of political operations, the ideology and infra-structure of elections, and the compulsions, direc tions and norms of India's foreign policy. Above all, it is a perception of the trends and tendencies in the panorama of Indian politics in their rationalist implicat ions with a view to explode some prevailing myths.