This chapter, unlike many others in this volume, does not have an academic discipline or a field of knowledge as its object. The aim here is to trace the career of a concept—the self—and its discursive trajectories in independent India. This choice comes with a host of challenges. To begin with, the concept of the self is notoriously elusive, as it has a multitude of meanings and functions in different fields of knowledge. Its definition, relations with neighbouring concepts, and the enquiries enabled by it— all seem to show considerable variation. The difficulty is compounded by issues of vocabulary. The English word ‘selfhood’ is often employed as an equivalent to Latin ipseity and, in its modern usage, is strongly associated with the concept of the individual. In most languages in India, the words that denote the individual self are of modern provenance and not in frequent use in everyday discourse. Many of them draw on Sanskrit words or prefixes, for example, atman and atma-, but modern meanings and usages of these words are often not explicable in terms of their resonances in classical traditions. A word used for the individual in many modern Indian languages is the Sanskrit-derived vyakti, but its dominant sense is individual identity rather than reflective selfhood. Premodern philosophical traditions in India, with their diverse approaches and assumptions, do not provide a unified or consensual understanding of the concept of the self. Is the self to be understood as the agent within us who performs actions? Or is it rather a witness who observes our actions and experiences? While both these notions of selfhood can be found in schools of classical Indian philosophy, there were also approaches that refuted them.