Benoy Kumar Sarkar and the genealogy of Indian nationhood

I offer an intellectual history of the idea of 'Indian nationhood' as reflected in the oeuvre of Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887 - 1949) which prefigures with the construction of 'Indian sociology' during the early twentieth-century British India. I argue that Sarkar's idea of the 'Indian nation' was an exercise of sociological knowledge production in relation to history that unites three underlying paradigms. Firstly, Sarkar elucidates the episteme of Indian nation with 'Indian race' as its elemental substrate. 'Race' was to function as the foundational premise of the 'Indian worldview'. Secondly, martial valor remains the most sublime expression of ethos in his view of the 'Indian nation'. According to Sarkar, a predisposition for war had to be the prime axis of internationalist outlook of the 'new India'. Finally, Sarkar firmly defends the unitary state as central to the national expression for the Indian polity. I underscore that Sarkar and his imaginarium demonstrate a pivotal case-study of how a closer understanding of 'worldview', as a 'patchwork' in progress, is foundational for appreciating a 'pre-history' of post-colonial nationalisms.