With a focus on combat-concepts, this essay charts an alternative analysis of Indian politics. This new framework documents politics that is pervasive in life but nearly silenced in analysis. In the mainstream approach, politics is taken as competition among parties, individuals or eras marked by a “charismatic” leader. Hence, it is common to view politics in terms of Congress party vs Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), A. B. Vajpayee vs Manmohan Singh, Nehru era vs Modi era. Combat-concepts, in contrast, identify often tacit commonality among seemingly rival parties, leaders and eras to show the unifying enemy against which all rivalries are either trivial or staged or both. Flagged first in The Algebra of Warfare-Welfare, my argument is that combat-concepts are at the heart of Indian politics as warfare-welfare. I begin with the clarification of my use of combat-concepts by bringing Keywords (1976) by Raymond Williams (1921-1990) in conversation with asymmetrical counter-concept…

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