ABSTRACT
Members of the Indian nationalist movement and India's early postcolonial political elite upheld visions of the Indian nation that had some common features, but those visions differed in many ways. The vast majority of them understood India to have a distinctive culture, or set of cultures, and considered these shared cultural forms more important than support for particular political principles or institutions in cementing the nation. In placing higher value on shared cultural forms, Indian nationalists differed especially from the republican understandings of nationhood predominant in France and the United States. While agreeing that a distinctive culture was crucial to the nation's character, they imagined the culture or cultures of the nation, and the relationship between national cultures, political institutions, and policies in a variety of ways. The myths that Indian nationalists of the late colonial and early postcolonial periods propagated of the Indian nation varied along two axes: first, pluralist/majoritarian; and second, modernist/traditionalist.
