Sudipta Kaviraj , an India political philosoher has long argued that the political is not a timeless or universal category. It is a historical formation that took a distinctive shape in modern India. In pre-modern India the dominant mode of thinking about power was rajaniti, the art of kingly conduct. Rule was limited, hierarchical, and constrained by custom, dharma, and the existing social order. The ruler maintained equilibrium rather than seeking to remake society as a whole. Modernity brought a profound change. The political became a totalizing sphere in which the state was imagined as the central agent of historical progress, social reform, and moral transformation. Kaviraj calls this transformation the enchantment of the state. Indians invested the modern state with redemptive power. It was expected to deliver development, justice, secular unity, and national purpose. This enchantment outlasted colonialism and even the era of economic liberalisation. It formed the deep background of Indian political life for decades after independence.
The Nehruvian and post-Nehruvian periods gave this enchantment a specific secular and developmental content. The state was understood as a neutral and rational instrument standing above particular communities. Its task was to modernise society, reduce poverty, expand education, and protect a plural public sphere. Political competition occurred within this framework. Parties mobilised caste, region, and class, yet the overarching imaginary of the state remained one of secular progress and constitutional modernity. Even when the state failed in practice, the ideal of its transformative mission retained power. Citizens continued to look to it as the primary site of hope and redress.
The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party after 2014 has engineered a rupture in this configuration of the political. The enchantment of the state has not disappeared. On the contrary, it has been intensified and redirected. What has changed is the moral content of the enchantment. The secular developmental vision has been steadily displaced by a cultural nationalist one. The state is no longer primarily imagined as a neutral moderniser standing above society. It is increasingly understood as the instrument for the realisation of a civilisational nation defined in majoritarian Hindu terms. Historical memory, public symbols, educational curricula, and cultural practices have all been drawn more tightly into the political field. The boundary between governance and cultural assertion has become porous.
This shift constitutes a genuine rupture rather than a mere change of policy emphasis. Under the earlier imaginary the political was the space in which a diverse society negotiated its path to modernity through the mediating power of the state. Under the new imaginary , the political becomes the arena in which a particular cultural majority asserts its claim to define the nation and to use state power to secure that definition. The people are no longer primarily a plural demos composed of many communities. They are increasingly invoked as a more homogeneous cultural body whose will the state must express and protect. Institutions that once claimed procedural neutrality are pressed into the service of this cultural project. Narrative control over history, language, and public space becomes a central technique of rule.
Kaviraj’s framework helps us see why this rupture is so consequential. Because the state remains enchanted, the stakes of controlling it are extremely high. When the moral purpose of the state is redefined, the entire grammar of political legitimacy changes. Opposition is more readily cast as opposition to the nation itself rather than as disagreement over policy or distribution. Social groups that do not fit the majoritarian cultural narrative find their place in the political order more precarious. At the same time, the democratic form is retained and even celebrated. Elections continue, turnout remains high, and popular mobilisation is intense. The rupture therefore does not take the form of an open rejection of democracy. It takes the form of a redefinition of the people in whose name democracy speaks.
The earlier secular enchantment had its own failures and exclusions. It often remained distant from the lived experience of large sections of the population and sometimes masked the persistence of hierarchy. Yet it preserved a conceptual space in which multiple communities could claim equal belonging within a shared political project. The cultural nationalist reorientation narrows that space. Belonging becomes more conditional upon alignment with a particular historical and cultural narrative. The political is no longer the site at which difference is managed through constitutional procedures and developmental promises. It becomes the site at which difference is ranked and ordered according to a civilisational hierarchy.
This transformation also alters the relationship between state and society. In the classic enchanted vision the state stood somewhat above society as a modernising force. In the new vision the state claims a more intimate identification with a particular cultural community while still demanding the loyalty of all. The result is a politics of permanent mobilisation in which cultural symbols and historical grievances are continually activated. Everyday life is more thoroughly politicised. Questions of food, dress, worship, and historical interpretation are treated as matters of national survival. The limited and restrained conception of rule that once characterised rajaniti is left even further behind. Power is expansive, pedagogical, and moralising.
Yet the rupture remains incomplete and contested. The older secular developmental imaginary has not vanished entirely from popular consciousness. Many citizens continue to evaluate the state by its capacity to deliver education, employment, and institutional fairness rather than by its success in cultural assertion. The persistence of these expectations creates friction within the new configuration of the political. When delivery falters, the cultural nationalist claim on the state can appear less self evident. The enchantment itself becomes vulnerable to disappointment.
Kaviraj’s insistence on the historicity of the political reminds us that no configuration is permanent. The modern Indian political was itself the product of a long and contingent process of imagination and struggle. The present reorientation of the enchanted state toward cultural nationalism is likewise the product of specific historical conditions, organisational energy, and narrative success. It has reshaped the meaning of democracy, the boundaries of belonging, and the purposes for which state power may legitimately be used. Whether this rupture consolidates into a durable new common sense or generates further transformations will depend on the capacity of competing imaginaries to speak to the material and ethical demands of the population. The political in India remains, as Kaviraj has always insisted, an unfinished historical project rather than a settled order.
