ABSTRACT
With the received ideas of the nation-state losing their legitimacy, ‘colonial constructs’ as the Indian state are bound to crack up and collapse even without external aggression, defeat in war and foreign occupation. What is, however, being sought to be put in its place is very much a ‘neo-colonial construct’, crafted by forces driven by an agenda of recolonization and rank reaction. In the perspective of a past, real or imagined, the modern Indian state, and everything that flows from this, such as citizenship, territoriality, boundaries and borders, indeed the very concept of national sovereignty, are little more than ‘colonial constructs’; and the separatist and secessionist outfits are performing a necessary and historically valid task, indeed even a ‘progressive’ task, in their struggle to unravel the despised ‘colonial construct’. The attainment of sovereignty by the constituent units of the modern Indian state will mark the beginning of the inevitable, indeed necessary, unravelling of the ‘colonial construct’.
