Futures India: society, nation-state, civilisation

The future of a phenomenon can only be understood in terms of (a) the conceptual construction one makes of it and (b) the changes in empirical content of that phenomenon. In turn, the empirical reality ought to be discerned in terms of the past-present-future dialectic. Keeping this in view, this paper begins with conceptual clarifications of the terms society, nation-state and civilization and situates India in terms of these notions. It is suggested that India’s future as a society and as a civilisation is durable although some changes in their content are inevitable. But as a ‘nation-state’ India may radically change given the contestations about it. Four competing value-orientations—cultural monism, cultural pluralism, cultural federalism and cultural subalternism—about the contemporary Indian nation-state have been identified. India’s future as a nation-state will depend upon the legitimacy these value orientations achieve in future.