India, April 26 -- Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit For several decades, the Indian intellectual landscape has been plagued by a quiet but profound crisis: a persistent, agonizing lack of civilizational confidence. In our universities, our public squares, and our literary festivals, we have cultivated a habit of perpetually looking outward for direction, validation, and epistemological frameworks. We intuitively turn to Descartes to understand consciousness, to Kant to comprehend epistemology, and to Hume to study causality. While Western intellectual traditions are undeniably robust and must be rigorously engaged, the tragedy lies in our unspoken assumption that serious philosophical inquiry begins and ends with them.

This outward gaze has r...