The future of India has been the subject of several pressing questions in the recent past particularly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the demolition of the Soviet Union, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the country's embarking on an adventurist globalisation-liberalisation programme. What constitutes India? And will it hold together? Today the strains on India are showing. Over-centralisation, communal conflict, caste rivalries, linguistic and ethnic assertions -- have all taken a toll of the ideals on which modern India is premised. This book addresses itself to the problem of conceptualising and understanding India. It concludes that what constitutes India is republicanism and if practice has subverted the ideal, it is perhaps time to devise another method of actualising the vision. What we may be witnessing is the messy birth of India's second republic and the re-invention of a nation in the image of its common people.