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For a Just Republic: The People of India and the State
""When was the last time we had a book of such breadth and depth on Indian politics? I asked myself this question as I finished reading Partha Chatterjee’s recent book For a Just Republic: The People of India and the State....you cannot now write about Indian politics without reference to For a Just Republic. You cannot ask questions about Indian politics without keeping Chatterjee at the back of your mind. That is the hallmark of a great book. In these uncertain times, it is an opportunity to reckon with our past with an eye to the future."
YOGENDRA YADAV, Indian Express
When the Constituent Assembly forged a Constitution for the new republic of India, it settled for a limited agreement which allowed people from different parts of the country to come together, even while leaving the deep histories of cultural identity to the regions. This points, says Chatterjee, to the varying trajectory of the nation-state – as opposed to the trajectory of what he calls “the people-nation”. One of the core achievements of this book is to analyse the complex connection between the two.
Among Chatterjee’s other spinal ideas is that while the new constitutional arrangements show strong continuities with pre-1947 colonial institutions, there has been considerable variety in the formation of the people-nation – comprising communities shaped over more than a century by their habitation within diverse modern regional languages.
Following this magisterial synthesis of Indian politics over the past seventy-five years, Chatterjee offers a persuasive political-economic analysis of the transition from the time of developmental planning to the present era of capitalist dominance. His study of changing caste-class-gender formations in the country’s diverse regions combines with a close examination of the uneven regional spread of India’s capitalist economy.
This book makes a powerful case for a just republic of India in which the federal system respects the equal worth of each part and accepts coalitions as the normal form of government at the Centre.
YOGENDRA YADAV, Indian Express
When the Constituent Assembly forged a Constitution for the new republic of India, it settled for a limited agreement which allowed people from different parts of the country to come together, even while leaving the deep histories of cultural identity to the regions. This points, says Chatterjee, to the varying trajectory of the nation-state – as opposed to the trajectory of what he calls “the people-nation”. One of the core achievements of this book is to analyse the complex connection between the two.
Among Chatterjee’s other spinal ideas is that while the new constitutional arrangements show strong continuities with pre-1947 colonial institutions, there has been considerable variety in the formation of the people-nation – comprising communities shaped over more than a century by their habitation within diverse modern regional languages.
Following this magisterial synthesis of Indian politics over the past seventy-five years, Chatterjee offers a persuasive political-economic analysis of the transition from the time of developmental planning to the present era of capitalist dominance. His study of changing caste-class-gender formations in the country’s diverse regions combines with a close examination of the uneven regional spread of India’s capitalist economy.
This book makes a powerful case for a just republic of India in which the federal system respects the equal worth of each part and accepts coalitions as the normal form of government at the Centre.
496 pages, Hardcover
Published July 17, 2025
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About the author
Partha Chatterjee
75 books98 followersPartha Chatterjee is a political theorist and historian. He studied at Presidency College in Calcutta, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. He divides his time between Columbia University and the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, where he was the Director from 1997 to 2007. He is the author of more than twenty books, monographs and edited volumes and is a founding member of the Subaltern Studies Collective. He as awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize for 2009 for outstanding achievements in the field of Asian studies. He is also a poet, playwright, and actor. In the Mira Nair film The Namesake (2007), he played the role of “A Reformed Hindoo.”
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