This volume is the second in the ongoing series on the History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization. It is a thematic exploration of the contextual meanings and configurations of major political ideas and ideals that have shaped the political world of colonial and postcolonial India. Deviating from a thinker-centred or chronological approach, these essays inquire into, and reflect on, the entire wide range of themes and issues in political thought in modern India, including political ideas: rights, freedoms, equality, social justice, constitutional rule, swaraj, swadeshi, satyagraha, class war, socialism, Hindutva, Hind Swaraj, syncretic culture and composite nationalism. This collaborative study explores the way Indian intellectuals encountered colonial modernity and examines how the Indian nation-state came to be constituted as a community of communities. It departs from the prevalent view that Indian Muslims have a unified structure of consciousness and analyzes Gandhi's role in bringing about harmony between Hindus and Muslims. It offers a corrective to the tendency to conflate Gandhian and Hindutva approaches.The volume also offers insights into the way the multi-religious Indian Hindu society gradually embraced the principles of liberal democracy and points out that constitutionalism, law and jurisprudence have not been given due attention by most Indian social and political theorists. It discusses contemporary debates on issues like OBC quotas, gender justice and women's representation and critically examines communist interventions in Indian politics since the 1920s and the role of the peasant masses as the collective agent of historical change in colonial and postcolonial India. Also discussed are the various Indian conceptions of order and justice in international relations.