This book is partly an attempt to negotiate the very difficult and challenging terrain of Indian modernity, more specifically, of the role of Indian nationalism in its construction. I believe that it is nationalism that became the primary engine of modernity in India. What I propose to do in this chapter is to offer a model and three snapshots that might help in understanding this phenomenon better. My model identifies three positions in India's response to modernity, while the snapshots are close examinations of three moments in the history of Indian nationalism through the reading of three sets of texts. The model is meant to explain India's intellectual face-off with the West, while the three snapshots are oblique illustrations of both the model and the face-off. Together, they are a part of a larger project of Indian self-understanding, which is so essential to the attainment of svaraj, or responsible self-governmentality, a goal that at both the individual and collective level, continues to fascinate and inspire.

Svaraj is, of course, the cornerstone not only of Gandhian thought, but of much of India's intellectual exertions in the last two centuries. We might even assert that what distinguishes political thought in India from Indian political thought—to use the distinction made by Professor Anthony Parel (2006) in ‘From “Political Thought in India” to “Indian Political Thought”’—is that the latter is centred on svaraj, while the former is not.