Indian political thought involves three related issues of ‘nation’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘national identity’. For obvious reasons, these three ideas constitute the foundation, as it were, of any nationalist discourse. Based on specific experiences, the thinkers engaged in this project seek to articulate a voice which is neither absolutely derivative nor entirely delinked with the context. In other words, the ideas are constructed, nurtured and developed within a social, political and economic milieu that can never be wished away in conceptualising social and political thoughts. What is most determining in the entire process is the organic link with a particular reality that always leaves an imprint on the construction of ideas. The purpose of this introduction is to capture the complex interrelationship between the ideas and reality in the context of exogenous but formidable influences of colonialism. Implicit in this process is the dialectics of social and political changes shaping ‘the mind’ of an age that is simultaneously a point of departure and convergence with its immediate past. Presumably because the ideas that constitute ‘the core’ of new thinking are an outcome of a process in which both the present and past seem to be important, they are creatively articulated underlining both the influences.