ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that conventional theoretical models about the structure of modernity and its historical extension across the world are faulty; to understand the historical unfolding of modernity, especially in the non-Western world, these theories need some revision. It illustrates this point by analyzing the role of "the political" in India's modernity. The state is utterly central to the story of modernity in India. It is not merely one of the institutions that modernity brings with it, for all institutions in a sense come through the state and its selective mediation. Interestingly, some of the intellectual and organizational techniques of modern disciplinary power were enthusiastically embraced by the new Indian elites. To nationalist Indians, the combination of instrumentality and emotion in the modern nation-state had always appeared to be the secret of British power, and it was essential to understand and replicate it.
