ABSTRACT The article refers to the processes that have been critical to the emergence of states as significant categories for the analysis of politics in India after a considerable period of academic neglect. It is in this context that the article considers the following research questions for discussion while referring to the state politics literature: what has been the contribution of the “first generation” of state-specific studies and to what extent has the “second generation” of inter-state comparative studies been able to take this forward? What could be the specific advantages of inter-state studies over single case studies? Finally, the article argues in favour of a need to develop further what may be considered the “third generation” of studies in the discipline, that remain comparative in nature but are in search of a much-nuanced grounded analysis; this would move beyond state-specific or inter-state studies and start taking up intra-state comparative studies, focusing on historical-cultural substate regions that have emerged as political (and economic) units within and across the constituent states of the Indian Union.

中文翻译：

---

超越民族国家：构建印度的州级政治

摘要 本文提到了在经历了相当长的学术忽视之后，国家作为印度政治分析的重要类别出现的关键过程。正是在这样的背景下，本文在参考国家政治文献的同时，考虑了以下研究问题进行讨论：“第一代”国家特定研究的贡献是什么，“第二代”在多大程度上有所贡献？国家间比较研究能够推动这一进程吗？与单一案例研究相比，国家间研究的具体优势是什么？最后，文章认为有必要进一步发展可能被认为是该学科“第三代”的研究，本质上仍然是比较性的，但正在寻找一种非常细微的基础分析；这将超越州特定或州际研究，并开始进行州内比较研究，重点关注历史文化次州地区，这些地区已成为印度联盟组成州内部和跨州的政治（和经济）单位。