4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST enquiry on these lines may be helpful in ascertaining as to what extent the secular features of the modern Indian state are rooted in the historical experience of the pro-modern period. As has been argued by the present author in an earlier paper, n closer examination of the working of the medieval Indian states brings out that Indian secularism, with all its special features, seems to be an extension of a particular tradition of political organisation, that was evolving in India down to the end of the 18th century. In this paper, I am going to elaborate on the same argument with reference to evidence that has been further enlarged in the meanwhile. In this context it would be relevant to restate in general terms certain elementary propositions regarding the medieval Indian states dominated by different ethnic groups professing Islam. These states wee invariably established and maintained on the basis of a working arrangement, arrived at, after the initial acts of wars and conquests, between the two clearly identifiable ruling groups : the predominantly Muslim officers of the king and the hereditary local chiefs who were mainly Hindus. Both these groups flourished on the appropriation of available social surplus and also participated, though from different hierarchical planes, in the exercise of political authority. It would, therefore, be reasonable to treat the king's officers and the hereditary chiefs A state representing the above situation of the ruling class would not have survived for long if it were organised as a Islamic theocracy committed entirely to establishing shariat and propagation of Islam. That the Delhi Sultanate as well as the Mughal empire were far from being Islamic theocracies ^and actually carried within their state orgainsations many overtly secular features is fully borne out by the observations of Ziyauddin Barani and Abul Fazi on the problems of sovereignty. It also seems that some of the essential elements of the theories of state as enunciated by them were, apparently,