This book charts the history of the term communalism and the politics and attitudes it seeks to encapsulate. While attending closely to the social, economic, and political issues underlying Hindu and Muslim struggles, it investigates and meanings different participants in the sectarian politics of the period attached to these politics. It is a part of a larger exercise aimed at understanding the construction of Indian society and politics in recent times by challenging the conventional analysis of communalism and providing alternative theoretical cues to grasp its nature and dynamics. The book also explores how nationalism and communalism are constructed out of shared as well as contested experiences and out of common and mutually contradictory visions and struggles. It is a milestone in contemporary debates on nationalist policies and modern political communities. Given the worldwide resurgence of religious nationalism and communalism, this new edition reopens many of the questions signalled in the first edition and carries the discussion forward through an analysis of the uses of the term communalism in a postcolonial world, and seeks to historicize the debate on political violence and the targeting of the minorities in recent times.