Idea of India Hard to Beat: Republic Resilient

Idea of India Hard to Beat is a collection of essays and articles written by Badri Raina between 2010 and 2015 that bear witness to the shifting socio-political dynamics of the recent past. Though these articles cover a diversity of political, social and cultural issues, the overarching concern of this anthology is the resilience with which the Indian nation adheres to fundamentals of political democracy. Despite the failure of the state to dismantle structures of inequity, despite attempts by the current dispensation to impose a uni-racial, uni-lingual, uni-religious “nationalism”, despite the frailties of the political opposition, the unassailable Constitution that governs the land and its people stands as a strident reminder of the egalitarian promise that informed our freedom struggle, the current government having called a special session of Parliament to celebrate the “Commitment to the Constitution” of India’s political class. That the Constitutional imperative should have thus been celebrated by a political force whose history has been inimical to the ideas that make up that imperative suggest a form of inevitability that now attaches to the Constitution of India.