Chapter 5 examines the Hindu polity literature, a body of early twentieth-century Indian academic works on ancient Indian political ideas, states, constitutional law, and international law. Produced largely by scholars affiliated with the University of Calcutta, these works were partly motivated by a desire to counter Western depictions of Indian constitutional history as backward and despotic. Drawing on sources such as the Arthashastra, the ancient Indian treatise on governance, the Hindu polity literature argued that ancient India had republican institutions, constitutional monarchies, and legal systems grounded in progressive principles. Indian scholars emphasized themes like social contract theory, the existence of international law, and traditions of democratic governance, often comparing these traditions favorably with Western ones. Echoing the anti-colonial Swadeshi political movement that emerged in Bengal at the same time, this scholarship reached its zenith in the 1920s. The chapter discusses the relationship of this body of literature to ideologies such as pan-Asianism and also mentions works on Islamic constitutional history that appeared in colonial India during the same period.