30 SOCIAL SCIENTIST have to be clarified, sharpened and given a direction. Cultural identities may seem innocuous but more often than not are equally strongly motivated as other identities since in effect they incorporate social behaviour and actions. Groups in society select and propagate those cultural symbols which they can control. Our selection of cultural forms today has been inevitably conditioned by the historical experience of the last two centuries. The projection was based on an image of an ideal society closely observing normative texts. The cultural traditions so selected emphasised upper* caste values, other-,worldliness, religious tolerance and a rather simplistic notion of a community, all of which were taken back to an early past. The current re-assertion of cultural identities directed towards the needs of nation-building requires of us a deeper analysis of cultural traditions and symbols. It is not sufficient that we echo and re-echo what has been said in the past few decades. This becomes particularly relevant when culture as defined in a narrow sense is sought to be made the basis of a national identity. Let me then repeat that we should be aware of the cultural traditions ' which we are creating and what goes into the making of a tradition : that normative values have to be juxtaposed with social reality if we are to understand the contribution of each; that the study of alternative traditions will provide us with a clearer image even of that we regard as established traditions and the manner in which they relate to other; that the selection of symbols which are constituted into a tradion are seldom random and generally have a purpose which should not go unnoticed; that such cultural symbols are not solely aesthetic forms or religious forms but have a social reference point. The continuity of culture therefore cannot be viewed merely as some kind of mystic communication from one generation to another where the people involved are mute recipients. When cultural traditions seek legiti-ipacy from history and thereby imprint themselves on the perception of the present and are used as building blocks in the construction of contemporary identities, then the voice of the historian has perforce to be heard. 1. Pancavimsa Brahmana 14.6.6 ; Brhad-devata 4.11.15 : 21.25 ; Rg Veda 7.33. 2. Mahabharata, Adi par van, 63. 3. Romila Thapar. 'Geneology as a Source of Social History', in Ancient Indian Social History : Some Interpretations, New Delhi, 1978, pp. 326-360. 4. Mahabharata, Adi parvan, 71. 5. Romila Thapar, 'Householders and Renouncers in the Brahmanical and Buddhist Tradition', in T.N. Madan (ed.), Way of Life, New Delhi, 1982, pp. 273-298. 6. Romila Thapar, 'Renunciation : The Making of a Counter-Culture ?' in AISH : SI, pp. 63-104. 7. E.g. K.A. Nilakantha Sastri. The Cholas, Madras, 1955, pp. 636-645, ?. Si^u-ki-l^ci^