ABSTRACT
Defining "India" is all the more difficult because the complexity that seems to characterize Indian civilization is in a very real sense the product of modern interpretations by Westerners and Indians alike. In reading books about India written in the last two centuries, one encounters modern intellectual structures imposed by writers and scholars
Mookerji, a prolific author on many aspects of Indian history and civilization, whose books were widely used in colleges and universities. The title of his Fundamental Unity of India indicates his abiding concern to show that India indeed had existed, both as a nation and as a state, from the most ancient times.5 For a nationalism seeking to define and legitimize itself, such articulations of the meaning of India were necessary correctives to imperialist interpretations.
