As Sunil Khilnani demonstrates in The Idea of India, the notion of India as a nation-state was something that was invented under British rule.4 Prior to Britain's arrival, the subcontinent was a hodgepodge of princely states, languages, ethnic groups, and religions, with the Mogul Empire's writ limited only to parts of northern India. Under the British, India got a sense of itself as a single, unified political space (even if that space was carved into Muslim and Hindu areas at Partition) and acquired a common language, a civil service and bureaucratic tradition, an army, and other institutions that would be critical to the emergence of a democratic India in 1947.5