Abstract:This presentation is literally going to be an exploratory one, and subsumes a renewed practice of disciplinary history without perhaps a determinable thesis about Indian social science research to offer. The practice of disciplinary history, as broadly conceived, examines how certain ideas, practices and processes of knowledge pose critical challenges to their disciplinary contexts of production, circulation and reception. Given these demands - and inflected (for the purposes of this presentation) onto the space of the quest of/for ‘Indianness’ in Indian social science research - I attempt some of my own fuzzy thoughts on the questions concerning this quest. In consequence, I propose what appear to me to be the most satisfying protocols for historical and analytic engagement with the theme of ‘Indianness’. If time permits, my observations will be contextualized to specific historical facets of the intellectual development of disciplines in a comparative frame, although some allusions to the academic trend or orientation of the early pioneers of Indian sociology will also be brought to bear on our questions of disciplinary history and national identity.

Prof.Sasheej Hegde is Professor of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. His research and teaching has concerned a subject area intermediate between “philosophy”, social and political theory, and culture critique: the question, specifically, of the enabling histories with which one works. More specifically, his areas of specialization have implicated three domains of inquiry: the Structure and Dynamics of Disciplines, the Interpretation of Modernity, and Research on Normative Political Languages. Even as these domains of inquiry have meant a renewed conceptual thrust, his work has actively sought to cultivate manyepistemological domains and socio-historical settings. His interests seem to be slowly devolving on questions of law/ethics and constitutional jurisprudence.