The Order of Men: The Nation and the Metropolitan Imaginary at an Indian Public School

This article is concerned with exploring discursive constructions of Indian post-coloniality and modernity. The analysis focuses upon a fully residential boys school in North India, the Doon School, which has played a historically significant role in the production of a discourse on nationhood and citizenship. Elsewhere, I have argued that the School defines its citizenship project in terms of three main ‘imaginaries’: secularism, rationality, and ‘metropolitanism’. This paper explores the construction of a narrative of the post-colonial nation-state at the School through ‘metropolitanism’