This course introduces and contextualizes some major issues pertinent to understanding how politics and society function in contemporary India. Beginning with the historical encounter between the British and various groups on the Indian subcontinent, the course explores the development of anti-colonial nationalism and subsequent independence. Most attention, however, is focused on the postcolonial period, and particularly on problems of economic development, caste and religious identities, democratic politics in a pluralist society, secularism, rural and urban society, the advent of economic liberalization over the past quarter century, and the impact on India of globalization.