ABSTRACT
Local spatial politics in metropolitan cities in India provide important arenas for an analysis of the dynamics of middle-class consumer-based forms of cultural citizenship that emerge in the context of economic liberalization. This chapter argues that the politics of spatial purification reconstitutes historical hierarchies of class inequality and produces new alliances of the new Indian middle class, the state, and capital. Consider the ways in which the relationship of nation-state, citizenship, and empire unfolds in relation to broader political processes in contemporary India. The analysis of Indian politics can contribute in a number of ways to a broader understanding of the politics of empire, particularly in relation to the United State nation–state—the center of empire in the 21st century. The economic, political, and military dimensions of contemporary empire converge in a set of processes that restructure both nation and state in ways that consolidate the exclusionary boundaries of citizenship.
