Asked by Praful Bidwai in an interview to sum up The Indian Ideology, Anderson said the book "advances five main arguments that run counter to conventional wisdom in India today": Firstly, that the idea of a subcontinental unity stretching back six thousand years is a myth.

[1]Gandhi: A Political and Spiritual Life by Kathryn Tidrick became the centre of a controversy since Perry Anderson called it the most important biography in The Indian Ideology.

[4] Associate Professor Kavita Philips from the University of California writes in Social History that Anderson's presentation is a polemical survey of modern India.

[5] Indian historian Irfan Habib criticised the essays for its selective presentation of facts and even distortion of them, a neglect of the colonial context in which the independence movement was waged, and the bypassing of the role of Muslim League in India's partition.

[9] Historian Ananya Vajpeyi had earlier critiqued Anderson's essays as a project resembling a "neo-imperial" venture, which she claimed produced a caricature of India's past.

[10] The following books were criticised by Anderson for "shar[ing] with the rhetoric of the state itself ... the centrality of four tropes in the official and intellectual imaginary of India":