This is an important little book based on lectures delivered at a celebration in honour of Profes- sor KN Panikkar’s 85th birthday. Popularly known as KN, he is perhaps the most well known figure in Kerala, with a huge reputation as public intellectual throughout the country. It is fitting that the scholars invited to celebrate his life and work should themselves be sig- nificant scholars who have made communication with a wider readership and audience a part of their academic endeavour, and like KN, stand for for the causes of secularism and democracy in this country. The presentations in this slim volume include weighty, but lucidly expressed thoughts on issues of contemporary concern and their historical and social and economic background. The history of dissent in ancient Indian history and its relevance today for democratic alterna- tives to the current regimes, the significance of the legacies of the national movement that are abiding, the modern weight of neo liberal policies of the last few decades and the necessity for fighting them in order to make a breakthrough in the current political and social impasse, and the experience with secularism and democracy in the post independence era are brought into focus to understand the crisis of Indian democracy, the prevalence of fascistic tendencies under the Modi regime, and the directions needed for a more humane society and polity.