The aim of this book is to reflect upon Jagat Narain Lal's richly conflictual journey and explore the competing strands of nationalism that intersected not just his own life, but also the nationalist world that he was a part of and that we inherited in 1947. As a member of the Indian National Congress and of the Hindu Mahasabha; as a Hindu who wanted to combine seva (service), bhakti (devotion), sangathan (organization) and virtues of civic nationalism; as a Gandhian and as an ascetic nationalist seeking freedom in a political world-Jagat Narain Lal's life becomes a mirror for the times in which the complex of religiosity, cosmology and ritual could not be isolated from either the political or the social field.

The book travels with Jagat Narain Lal in his journey as a nationalist through four pathways-Ascetic, Hindu Nationalist, Anti-Colonial and Civic nationalisms. His life and times give us a glimpse into these intersecting, competing and mutating idioms of nationalism. In his anxieties and competing political pursuits lies Indian nationalism's own fraught relationship with questions of identity, faith and nationhood. In his vulnerability, suffering, negotiations and truth-telling lies a story of nationalism's own conflicts and contradictions. In Jagat Narain Lal's small story lies a bigger history of competing nationalisms, as well as a tale that speaks to the present.