Challenges to the polity IB

The looming challenge of communalism in India is the nation's single biggest internal challenge, not only to the working and stability of our domestic- secular federal system, but also to the basic principles governing our national life and providing meaning to our new identity. Today communalism is tearing apart the rich, beautiful and closely- knit, multi-coloured tapestry of Indian
unity. In the backdrop of world history, the diverse nation of India appears as a great artefact of socio-cultural eomingling, a proud product of centuries of rare human admixture of ethnic, religious, regional and linguistic strands, whose process of interaction and synthesis resulted in evolving the world's most authentic and complex plural society. It is this great polity, with its rich and rare background, that is threatened today with domestic disruption, due to engineered discord among its many segments. This volume records the deliberations of the first two seminars in the series. The first one, held on 7 March 1987, was on Communalism and Casteism, and the second on 28 November 1987, on the Economic Challenges to the Polity.