The problematic of Alternative Modernities necessary leads us back to the vision of historical time divided into Antiquity, Medieval and Modern, originating and evolving in western Europe and universalised in the 19th and 20th centuries through an unequal power relation. To begin with "modern" was used as a descriptive term to demarcate the present from the past. Post-Enlightenment, it acquired a value load of reason in opposition to religion or religiosity of any sort which came to be derisively designated as superstition which had characterised the "dark ages". With Positivism's privileging of science and technology, Modernity was invested with the character of an Abstraction, the approximation to which attested the degree of modernity of every society, every institution, even every individual. Its paradigm was one of capitalist economy. In one very powerful version, the approximation to this Abstraction in Asia, Africa and Latin America was mediated through colonialism and its discourses; in another, even as colonialism was contested, the approximation to Modernity was mediated through demonstration of parallel and comparable indigenous developments even prior to the colonial intervention. A Marxist version of this discourse was to demonstrate signs of the development of capitalism in India (like commercial capital) which was disrupted by colonial intervention. The acceptance of the Abstraction of Modernity, however, remained in tact. The movement of our ideas thus remains encircled by it. One severe effect of it all is the suppression of any expression of plurality of discourses. It is to this plurality that I would like to draw attention.

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