In my research on Indian and Punjabi politics and economics, I found that one of the most intriguing developments after 1947 was how consensus slowly grew around forming a Punjabi-speaking state. When momentous change happens, it usually results from both grassroots movements and shifts among those in power, i.e. the convergence of pressure from below and the movement from above. Antonio Gramsci, the great Italian Marxist thinker and revolutionary, theorised this process of reaching a social consensus as the emergence of an idea as hegemonic.

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