The distinction between “politics” and “the political” has become a key precept of modern social science, philosophy, and cultural history. The awareness of the demise of the sovereign nation-state as prime actor and object of political science gave rise to an intensive and interdisciplinary debate on the “Metamorphoses of the Political”. Today, “the political” changes its “aggregate state” continually, encompassing new fields of social practice as it withdraws from others, frequently appearing as “antipolitics”. In the long 20^th century, the Indian subcontinent has been one of the most vigorous sources of distinctive conceptualizations and practices of “the political” beyond the North Atlantic region.