This book revisits historiography on nationalism by moving beyond the binary of elite and subaltern nationalism and focusing on the complex nature of popular nationalism. It also underscores the protests of the subordinate police, an area which has so far remained unexplored. By foregrounding the police’s interface with nationalism and its varied trends, it problematizes both the accepted view of the state’s subordinates as being effectively integrated with the colonial state and their identity as agents of the state. In effect, the book asserts that nationalism was not merely an attempt to eject the British nor was it simply a political struggle for power. Rather, it was also a hegemonic contestation with colonialism, but one within which the counterhegemonic struggle of nationalism was also intertwined with contest for hegemony within Indian society.