We can broadly divide modern Indian thought into two phases. The first phase was that of what has often been referred to as the phase of 'Social Reform'. Thinkers of this phase, as we shall see, were more concerned with the internal regeneration of indigenous society, and because its first effervescence occurred in Bengal, it was often referred to as the 'Bengal renaissance'. Nationalist historians, of course, even started referring to it as the Indian renaissance, but this will be an inaccurate description for reasons that we will see shortly. The second phase, more complex and textured in many ways, is the phase that we can designate as the nationalist phase. The concerns in this phase shift more decisively to questions of politics and power and of freedom from colonial rule. It is important to remember that what we are calling the 'nationalist phase' is merely a shorthand expression, for there were precisely in this period, many more tendencies and currents that cannot simply be subsumed under the rubric of 'nationalism'. However, it is necessary to make a few clarifications. Though most scholars have tended to see these as two distinct phases or periods, this way of looking at the history of modern Indian political thought can be quite problematic. This periodisation can only be very broad and tentative ones, made for the purpose of convenience of study; on no account should they be rendered into fixed and hermetically sealed periods. In fact, we can more productively see them as two broad currents which do not necessarily follow one after the other. As we shall see, there are many social reform concerns that take on a different form and continue into the nationalist phase. In fact, the nationalist phase itself reveals two very distinct tendencies in this respect. On the one hand, there is the dominant or hegemonic nationalism, represented in the main by the Indian National Congress, where the social reform agenda is abandoned in a significant way; on the other, there are other contending narratives that insist on privileging the reform agenda much to the discomfort of the nationalists. We shall soon see why. We shall also have the occasion to note that, in this respect, Gandhi remains almost the lone figure within this hegemonic nationalism who keeps trying to bring in the reform agenda into the nationalist movement.