Introduction: Time, and the Politics and Poetics of Alternative Section One: Social Transformation and the Space and Time of Nation 1 Karl Marx: Colonialism, Nation Form, and Social Transformation 2 Home, World, and an Uncertain Nation 3 In the Time of Nations Section Two: The Problematic of Population and Power in Transformative Politics 4 The Problem of Population: Recalling Marx’s Critique of Malthus 5 Populations and Populism as a Problematic in Transformative Politics Section Three: Two Universalisms: Imperial Imaginary and Imaginary of the Oppressed 6 Hegel’s India and Imperial Imaginary of the Universal 7 Annihilation of Caste and Universalism of the Oppressed Section Four: Contentions and Antagonisms as Template of Alternative Thinking 8 Charles Tilly’s Theorising of Contention 9 Genocide: A Most Contentious Word and Concept of Modern time Section Five: Beyond the Political, Imaginaries of Other Kinds 10 The Impossibility of Politics: Brecht, Manto and Two Acts of Literature 11 Memories of the Forgotten Section Six: Event as a Congealed Site of New Possibilities 12 Settling Account with the Point of Origin: Marx, Engels, and the Revolution of 1848 13 October Revolution as an Alternative in the Colonial and Postcolonial Time 14 Occupy College Street, 1967-69 15 Crisis, Biopolitics from Below, and a New Model of Public Power 16 Layers of Solidarity 17 Epilogue