Political aspects of national integration

The Concept of India's unity in cultural and religious terms is substantiated by historical evidence and social practice. But to-day the issue of national integration has become extremely sensitive. This is the first serious and corn prehensive study covering the various aspects of the tangled problem in a broad theoretical perspective, followed by empirical analysis of factors like, casteism, communalism, regionalism and tribalism. The author analyses the models of unity available to the Indian polity. The study deals in depth with the political development and the major crisis of integration since independence. It sorts out the issues that affect identity decisions in India and condition the responses to change, development and modernisation as they
enter into integrative process. The author feels that the problem of national integration in India does not arise out of lack of integration but because of the plural nature of India's society. Caste relations are economic relations and the reversal of these forms the genesis of caste-tensions. Linguistic lobbies and militant regionalism have also acquired electoral significance in a
manipulative politics. The political parties in their bid to maintain and acquire political power, became the victims of the caste, ideology, religion and region. Through an indepth study of the various issues in their sociopolitical and historical dimensions, the
author makes a major contribution to the study of the integrative process in India.