Philosophy as Samvada and Svaraj discusses Daya Krishna and Ramchandra Gandhi’s respective intellectual contributions and speculates how one might take forward the work of the two persons who were among the most brilliant minds of our times.

Both Daya Krishna and Ramchandra Gandhi emphasized freedom and autonomy of thought and upheld the importance of samvada, somewhat inadequate in its English translation as dialogue. And both of them were philosophers concerned with how philosophy might seek its svaraj, free from the orientalist hold of the religious, the colonial crippling of indigenous languages and institutions and the structures and categories of un-freedom that continue to haunt inhabitants of West and non-West. Philosophy must involve samvada—an open dialogue and intimate encounter between self and other. Both philosophers experimented with these concepts and were enormously creative.

This book is a testament not only to the core values of philosophy, but also to how these values can be carried forward by new weaves of tradition and modernity.

Introduction
I: OF LOVE, LIBERATION AND LILA
Fred Dallmayr Figure and Ground: Reflections on Two Exemplary Indian thinkers Anuradha Veeravalli Ramlila: A Metaphysics of the Everyday Bettina Bäumer ‘Falling in Love with a Civilization’: A Tribute to Daya Krishna, the Thinker
II: THE IDEA OF SWARAJ: ASYMMETRIES OF POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND ALTERNATIVE, ETHICAL POLITICS
Richard Sorabji Gandhi and the Stoics: Squaring Emotional Detachment with Universal Love and Political Action Tridip Suhrud A Still, Small Voice Michael McGhee Learning to Converse
III: MODES OF SAMVAD
Devasia M Antony Towards a New Hermeneutic of Self-inquiry Daniel Raveh On Philosophy as Samvada: Thinking with Daya Krishna Mustafa Khawaja The Dialogue Must Continue
IV: LANGUAGE, SELFHOOD AND PHILOSOPHY
Bijoy H. Boruah The Virtue of Being a Self Prasenjit Biswas Daya Krishna’s ‘Presuppositionless Philosophy’: Sublimity as the Source of Value and Knowledge Ramesh C Pradhan The Moral and the Spiritual: A Study of the Self and the Not-self in Daya Krishna and Ramchandra Gandhi Arindam Chakrabarti On Missing and Seeming to Miss: Some Philosophical Ramblings on the Subjective/Objective Distinction in Memory of Daya Krishna Probal Dasgupta Dialogical Investigations on Daya Krishna and Ramchandra Gandhi
V: RE-THINKING ISSUES IN THE ARTS/ETHICS/SCIENCE/MATHEMATICS
Neelima Vashistha The Applicability of Indian Aesthetic Theory of Rasa to the Visual Arts: A Rejoinder to Daya Krishna’s Article, ‘Rasa—The Bane of Indian Aesthetics’ C K Raju The Harmony Principle S Lokanathan On Mathematics and the Physical World
VI: ON LIFE AND DEATH AND DYING
Shankar Ramaswami Matricide and Martyrdom: Cancer and Karm in the Kalyug Afterword Index