Political representation in India: Enlarging the perspective

Democratic theory has recently been marked by a renewed interest in political representation that is manifest in, and proceeds from, a series of theoretical works that radically open up the concept of representation. This introductory article briefly presents some of the key theoretical propositions that are brought forward by this body of literature, but also by anthropological works on South Asia, namely (i) the intrinsic plurality of the meanings and forms of political representation; (ii) the centrality and pervasiveness of representation processes in political life; and (iii) the constructivist dimension of political representation. As I introduce the four papers in this Special Issue, which collectively demonstrate the heuristic value of an engagement with such debates to understand contemporary Indian politics, I insist that what is at stake is not so much a “crisis” of political representation as a series of events and evolutions that question received knowledge about political representation in India.