ARI Working Paper Series

How have Britain and India constituted each other after empire? This paper presents the preliminary results of an analysis of British and Indian national identity discourses from 1950 to 2001.  The findings are as follows: first, there has been no single prevailing image of the UK in India or of India in the UK but rather multiple, multi-vocal and often contradictory perspectives. Second, India has appears less frequently in British identity discourses than Britain in Indian identity discourses—a pattern that holds both overall and within individual years under study. Third, British constructions of India, and Indian constructions of Britain have  primarily functioned as arguments about the Self—its aspirations and aversions. Fourth, identity discourses appear to be sticky: the character of critical evaluation of the Other has varied over time but not radically so. The concluding section discusses future research trajectories for this project.