is however one major difference between the world Cabral was looking at and analysing and the Indian world. Among the fully colonised states only the East Asian states, notably India, the Indochinese state, Indonesia and the like had rich and ancient classical art-traditions. They did not face the kind of problem which Aime Cesaire was faced with for example. 'I wanted to create an Antillean French, a black French that while still being French had a black character/ This was Cesaire's problem which the pre-1947 Indian could not have understood. The Vietnamese would not understand it even now. There are many Indians who would not understand it today. But equally our India's downing-grading of anti-imperialism has produced a generation now which would perhaps want to create as many Brown Americans and Europeans in this country as possible. Be that it may, the time has come, we believe, to reassert the centrality, vitality and the abiding relevance of the nationalist movement. The bunch of papers presented here on cinema, painting, music, philosophy and literature and theatre were originally presented at a seminar jointly organised by this Journal and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. It is a pity that all the presentations made at the seminarwere not available for publication. But we hope a sizeable and representative sample is being offered here. The experience of the people of India during the colonial times has been one of struggle and, for that very reason, creative and fascinating. A colonial experience is for the colonised people anti-colonial experience. The realms of arts and aesthetics are no exception. The essays that follow, we hope, establish the connection between struggle and creativity, recovery and renewal, the past and the present, the old and the new, and so on. What is important to see is that 'anti-imperialism' in India in its mainstream at any rate, did not lead to an uncritical glorification or rejection either of historical India or of modern Europe. To be sure, the intellectual and cultural history of this dialectic between an ancient but defeated India and modern and advanced Europe has not been fully documented or written about. The essays brought together in this volume are a small contribution to that continuing effort. Hopefully they would contribute some insights to art and literature histories as well. We would welcome debate on the issues raised by these essays and would be more than happy to consider for publication such responses as our readers might have to offer. Do please write to us on the issues raised by these papers. Journal of Arts & Ideas 3