Teaching Indian Politics: How Independent Are We?

Several questions come to mind when we think of the state of teaching Indian politics at a time when we celebrate 75 years of independence. How much progress did we make in advancing knowledge of India’s political reality, an objective of the Indian political scientists during British rule? How independent intellectually are Indian political scientists, as a collective, from the West in theorizing India’s democratic politics? Is there domination of overseas concepts and analysis in our understanding of Indian politics? How do we bring together, integrate and synthesize the theories of Indian politics that are produced abroad and those that are developed within India? I do not claim to have satisfactory answers to these questions. But I believe that they claim our attention.