<p>What we today call “digital sovereignty” is neither a universal concept nor a neutral one. It is a product of specific cultural histories—American liberalism, Chinese statism, and European legalism—each grounded in theological and political trajectories unique to the West. This paper examines how these models—when exported globally—produce epistemic tensions in societies shaped by different traditions of thought. Through four case studies—Aadhaar, GDPR, China’s Social Credit System, and ChatGPT—it shows how digital infrastructures are not merely tools of governance, but enactments of particular moral orders. Aadhaar performs modernity through a postcolonial state’s imitation; GDPR legislates morality through Europe’s juridical universalism; China encodes Confucian ethics via algorithm; and ChatGPT extends Western epistemology under the guise of intelligence. These are not exceptions that require explanation—they are symptoms of a deeper malady: the global circulation of categories that were never born global. What masquerades as universal is, in fact, provincial knowledge on a global tour. This paper, then, is not a call for better models, but for a different conversation—one that begins with civilizational difference, not ends with it. Sovereignty, here, becomes the right to think otherwise—and to build from that thinking.</p>