STRUGLE FOR IDEOLOGICAL TRONSFORMATION !^ of independent economic development including independence from foreign capital, the creation of an independent capital goods sector based on the latest technology and the foundation of independent science and technology. In the 1930s, the objective of economic planning was widely and universally accepted. The multi-faceted diversity of the Indian people was fully recognised. The political objective of unifying the Indian people into a nation was to be realised by taking full account of regional, religious, caste, ethnic and linguistic differences. Secularism was made a basic constituent of the nationalist ideology. Similarly, the cultural aspirations of the different linguistic groups were given official recognition. The nationalist movement opposed caste oppression and after 1920 made abolition of untouchability a basic constituent of its programme and political work. The nationalist movement was fully committed to parliamentary democracy and civil liberties. From the foundation of the Indian National Congress, the nationalist and other mass organisations were organised along democratic lines. From the beginning the nationalists fought for the freedom of the press, speech and association and other civil liberties. It was the national movement which undertook as well as accomplished the task of making parliamentary democracy and civil liberties indigenous. On the socio-economic plane, the national movement from the beginning adopted a pro-poor orientation and accepted and propagated a programme of reforms that was quite radical by contemporary standards and was basically oriented towards the people. Compulsory primary education, lowering of taxation on the poor and lower middle classes, reduction of salt tax, land revenue and rent, debt relief and provision of cheap credit to the agriculturists, protection of tenant-rights, defence of trade union rights and of the worker's right to a living wage and a shorter working day, higher wages for low-paid employees including the policemen, protection and promotion of village industries, improvement in the social position of women, including their right to work and education and to equal political rights, and reform of the machinery of law and order including the jails, were some of the major reformist demands taken up by the national movement. Over the years, the nationalists evolved a policy of opposition to imperialism on a world scale, and of expressing and establishing solidarity with the anti-imperialist movements in other parts of the world. On the one hand, from the 1870s, they made an effort to establish solidarity with, and get the support of, the anti-imperialist sections of the British public life and firmly established the notion that the Indians hated imperialism but not the British people ; on the other hand, from 1878 onwards they gave support to the anti-imperialist struggles of the Burmese people, the Afghans, the tribal people of the North West Frontier, the Chinese people at the time of the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 and the I-Ho-Tuan (Boxer) Uprising, the Tibetan people^ the people of Egypt and Sudan and the