ABSTRACT
A decade after the appearance of the Indian English edition of Hind Swaraj, K. C. Bhattacharyya (KCB) gives his intriguing talk on 'Svaraj in Ideas'. Ramachandra Gandhi's (RCG) argument that 'advaita is a distinctive identifying feature of Indian consciousness' is as thick a conception of svaraj as is available, demanding onto-epistemological commitments that are so exclusionary it is frightening even to a moderate traditionalist. First generation, including early scholars like Rajni Kothari, was the first to articulate normative social and political ideas both evoking the distinctive character of Indian thought, while also attempting to surpass it and step comfortably into the secular modern. The transition from the second generation of contemporary socio-political theory to the third generation is a story of negotiating, of seeking to free ourselves from the dilemma of opting only for either no svaraj or thick svaraj, of having to choose between paternalism or patriarchy.
