SocArXiv SocArXiv Preprint : May 1, 2020 10.31235/osf.io/89yqv What is the Idea of India? Revisiting the Question Using a Text Generator of Indian Prime Ministers * Jean-Thomas Martelli † Centre de Sciences Humaines (New Delhi) jt.martelli@csh-delhi.com Salil Parekh ‡ Quicksand (New Delhi) salil458@gmail.com Abstract Situated at the crossroads of computational politics and intellectual history, this essay uses a natural language processing model trained on a large database of speeches from Prime Ministers since 1946 to generate analytically intelligible answers to a much-debated question: what is the idea of India? Building on Khilnani’s account on the inclusive and modernist endeavour of the makers of postcolonial India, this text revisits the argument by contrasting Jawaharlal Nehru’s emphasis on diversity with Narendra Modi’s stress on unity. We argue that the gradual political deepening of the Hindu nationalist project in the country durably amends the state-sponsored idea of India. The article further discusses the epistemic status of ‘human’ insights derived from machine learning outputs. We outline five potential methodological aides of the automated approach to historical inquiry. Despite the fuzziness of model-generated texts, we insist on the hermeneutical usefulness of ‘political spectres’ in facilitating the identification of historical shifts in the representation of nationhood. Keywords : Indian politics, machine learning, Prime Ministers, speeches, intellectual history, unity-diversity, discourse, language model, GPT-2, spectres. * Work in progress. † Jean-Thomas Martelli is a mixed methods ethnographer in political science and sociology, with a focus on educated youth, representation and the politics of becoming in contemporary India. He recently curated an archival exhibition on student politics. For material, contact and his emerging interest in text analysis and the study of populist speeches: topol.hypotheses.org. ‡ Salil Parekh has a background in design and has an inclination towards generative art and virtual spaces. While contributing to new media projects at Quicksand, his understanding of space, experiences, and visual design helps his work in recreating physical spaces digitally.