Sunil Khilnani examines how India's self-understanding has evolved since independence, tracing the idea of secular, democratic nationhood from Nehru's founding vision through subsequent challenges and transformations. Khilnani, a political theorist at King's College London, argues that India's achievement was not merely political independence but the creation of a new kind of political community on the subcontinent. He explores how the Indian state attempted to forge national identity from extraordinary diversity, using democratic elections, constitutional law, and modernizing development projects. The book examines key sites and institutions: the city, which became the arena of political contestation; the temple, around which religious nationalism mobilized; the village, romanticized by Gandhi but transformed by green revolution; and the university, where Indian intellectuals debated modernity's meanings. Khilnani writes with elegance about complex questions of identity and political belonging. The revised edition extends the analysis to the twenty-first century, considering how Hindu nationalism has challenged the pluralist idea Nehru attempted to establish. The book serves as both intellectual history and meditation on what democracy might mean in a society marked by caste hierarchy and religious difference. Khilnani's India is neither triumphalist celebration nor declinist lament but a clear-eyed assessment of an ongoing experiment.