46 SOCIAL SCIENTIST and associations and often accepts systematic ideologies. Secondly, while the exclusiveness in the distant past was confined generally to the sphere of religion and some religious ceremonies, communalism today seeks to encompass all aspects of life. The Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha of the pre-Independence India are the king examples of such communal organisations. It is necessary to lay stress on the modern origins of communalism because these origins are often interpolated into medieval Indian history, to the so-called "coming of the Muslims" and the establishment of the "Muslim rule", to be precise. This interpolative argument, somewhat simply put, runs along the following lines : While the Indian (i.e. the Hindu) society had always welcomed any outsider with open arms and while prior to the Muslims all outsiders had merged their identity with the mainstream of Indian life, e.g., the Greeks, the Shakas, the Kushanas, the Hunas, etc., it is the Muslims who came only to dominate over the vast majority of the Hindus and refused to be absorbed in the Indian society. On the contrary, they demolished Hindii temples and tried to impose their own religion through the use of military and political power. This is where communalism originates. Although this view is sought to be presented as neutral and objective, the assumptions underlying it are themselves quite communal. First, while it refers to all others, the Greeks, the Shakas, the Hunas, etc., by their race or the country of origin, it refers to the Muslims by their religion. If, instead of the "Muslims', the terms 'Truks', 'Afghans', 'Mughals' were used, the result would have been quite different. No one would then be able to state that the Muslims had refused to merge their identity with the mainstream of Indian (in the true sence, not Hindu) life. For, it is interesting to speculate that while the Rajputs, who had preceded the Truks by a few centuries, have maintained their identity to this day and have no intention of losing it, why is it that their is no trace of the descendants of the great Turkish dynasties, the 'Slave' dynasty, the Khaiji, the Tughlaq, the Lodi dynasties and even the Mughal dynasty which was the centre of the great Rebellion a little over a bare century ago ? Obviously, they have all lost their identity in the bigger identity of India. Second, this view assumes the establishment of an exclusive Hindu subject class in medieval India. This assumption is open to question on two counts : (i) the Muslim rulers were never able to dominate over the entire country ; large and small territories of the Hindu rulers, independent and semi-independent, were interspersed throughout with the territories under the control of the Muslim rulers ; and (ii) what is more [ important, the ruling as well as the subject classes consisted of both |the Muslims and the Hindus. Even in territories formally under the 'Muslim rulers, it is the ubiquitous class ofZamindars, consisting of various strata from a village headman to a Raja or Rao or Rana etc., who collected the land-revenue and maintained the law and order in the vast rural areas—these two being the primary functions of the state in the pre-