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Born in Delhi, Sunil Khilnani is a professor of political science at Birkbeck College, University of London and the author of "The Idea of India," in which he credits Nehru's commitment to multicultural society with India's survival. According to Khilnani, this vision was "a tale of cultural mixing and fusion." India required a state that was "committed to protecting cultural and religious difference rather than imposing a uniform 'Indianness.'"
In the absence of today's familiar concept of "multi-culturalism," Khilnani sees Nehru's political strategy as a bold one for the 1940s. As a result of Nehru's wisdom, Khilnani suggests, democracy has "irreversibly entered the Indian political imagination." Khilnani wonders, however, whether the secular foundations that Nehru helped create can sustain India amid increasing religious fundamentalism.
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