In Democracy in America, Tocqueville proclaimed that equality of social class would eventually prevail everywhere. In The Old Regime and the French Revolution, he analysed the long and painful struggle between a centralising modern State and an old and complex society based on rank. His "Notes on India" written in the early 1840s revealed a penetrating understanding of Indian mores and customs in his time. What, then, if he went to India today to see for himself how the sub-continent is coping with its contradictions ?

After an opening account of India's specifics, Jean Alphonse Bernard invites Tocqueville to join him on a tour of today's Bihar, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Kerala before drawing his own conclusions in more theoretical terms. Although all of the riddles cannot be solved, Tocqueville in India explores the enduring dialogue between the State and Society. Following neither Fukuyama nor Huntington, this essay should attract the attention of those concerned by Indian issues as well as every reader interested in political philosophy or world affairs.

262 pp, septembre 2006