The intellectual and cultural archeology of Asia offers a fascinating glimpse of a scintillating yet intermittent stream of Reason-based thinking in the region. Despite its great social and ethical promise, despite its universal embrace and relevance, the Naturalist, Materialist approach of yore failed to become the dominant thought in Asia. What were the forces that pushed that tradition back into a civilizational memory lapse?  
 
 It is possible to reconstruct the glorious Rationalist thought traditions of Asia by examining the works of Scholars and Intellectuals past and present and by looking at their continued relevance in modern times. This would help establish that Freethinking and a secular understanding of society and of nature are indigenous to Asia too, consequently defeating the notion that Reason, Humanism, Human Rights and indeed Science are imports from the Western world. That argument and ruse would then no longer be available to tyrants and dictators, emerging and established, to claim that Universal values are alien to the region and hence inappropriate and unsuitable. The implication of a Postmodern approach to universal values and the idea of common humanity has had disastrous consequences, and not just in Academia where the fad appears to be now receding. Such an exercise to locate Reason in civilizations before and after the European will also help Reason clear the taint of having being associated with Colonialism and Imperial ambitions which went beyond the conquest of territories and a European project.  
 
 In this paper I would like to present the related key ideas and notions with the appropriate factual references to make my case.