Righteous republic

Taking five of the most important founding figures Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar - Vaipeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. Within their vast intellectual, aesthetic, and moral inheritance, the founders searched for different aspects of the self that would allow India to come into its own as a modern nationstate. The new republic they envisaged would embody both India's struggle for sovereignty and its quest for the self.