It is still a moot question whether there is something called an ‘Indian’ liberal theory. The term ‘Indian’ becomes dubious not only because ‘India’ has been geographically indeterminate but also parts of India, civilizationally, have had strong political sub-cultures (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Shaivite, Vaishanavite, Islamic etc.) (Kulke & Rothermund, 2016, pp. 50–108; see generally on the question of origin of India, Asif, 2020) as well as been part of different empires that have stretched in the West to Greece and in the East to places as far as modern-day Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand (Allen, 2019; Karttunen, 1997; see generally, Pollock, 2009). Moreover, India, because of its central location in a naval trade route that stretched from the Middle East to the far East, witnessed the traffic of different cultures across its land and assimilated different traditions (Subramanian, 1996; see generally, Subrahmanyam, 2005). But still many intellectual and historical accounts of modern-day India take the inescapable, traumatic and recent event of the Partition between India and Pakistan which happened in 1947, as the politically charged reference point that requires explaining why and how India became a historical entity (Bayly, 2012; Devji, 2013; Jalal, 1985; Pandey, 2001). This is quite natural because after all the one modern-day event which has shaken the political consciousness of the Indian subcontinent in recent times, and still continues to play a major role in local geopolitics, is the event of partition. From a temporal perspective, taking the Partition as the climax of the modern Indian story has the virtue that at least the historical description will be up to date. But on the other hand, a necessary consequence of taking Partition as a major constituting factor in modern political consciousness is that subsequent political theorizations tend to look at themselves as intellectual and sometimes therapeutic exercises to come to terms with this traumatic event in our collective consciousness. If we were able to, counter-factually, raise ourselves above the din of history and look at things sub specie aeternitatis then we might realize that the choice of any historical turning point becomes quite arbitrary. In that case, one ought to become indifferent as to whether one takes the Partition or the Sepoy’s Mutiny (1857) or the Battle of Plassey (1757) or the First Battle of Panipat (1526) or the Battle of Raichur (1520) or even the mythical defeat of Ravana in the hands of Ram as the start of Indian political consciousness.