ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a broadened outlook upon independence and partition, as well as their implications for notions of belonging, citizenship and democracy in postcolonial South Asia. It suggests that although community was privileged the individual in western India, too, caste and language emerged as equally significant forms through which citizenship and belonging were framed, exercised and claimed. The book examines the ways in which concepts of democracy were comprehended and employed at the moment of postcolonial transition. It explores in greater detail the reasons why community came to be politicised by both colonial administrators and indigenous political actors during the interwar period. The book demonstrates that community identities were politicised as a consequence of an expanding franchise and the gradual democratisation of representative government.
