2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST indifferent to the question of the ways and means to salvation and had turned its attention away from the issues of otherworldliness and supematuralism to the real problems of existence, it did so along with an attempt to put religion to civil uses. Social practices that derived their strength from religion were sought to be abolished with the backing of religion. Thus though these reform movements had great achievements to their credit, including the release of the individual from the religious exploitation of the dominant sections and the growing focus on social problems like extreme inequality, they were subject to the ideological limitations of the intelligentsia of the time. "The general critique of inequality and poverty in nineteenth century India," according to Panikkar, "was enclosed within a bourgeois perspective, for it was more concerned with ways for reinforcing the system which generated inequality, than transforming it." Further, even this limited growth of rationalist and humanist thought was thwarted "in the wake of the intellectual and cultural defence that developed during the latter part of the nineteenth century in response to the colonial hegemonization." The fallout was that the furthest to which the development of the critique of religion progressed was 'universalism', which sought to establish that all religions are essentially true, but pursuing different paths to the same end, expressing thereby the need for solidarity within and between religions in the face of colonial domination. It was this fall-out which shaped Indian secularism, which provides an equal recognition to all religions, and strives to end discrimination against the followers of any one of them. Unfortunately, this circumscribes social consciousness within religious parameters and keeps open the possibility of the reemergence of particularistic and antagonistic tendencies. This, according to Panikkar is the weakness of Indian secularism, necessitating in the current context a frontal critique of religion, with a view to its "resolute, positive abolition". The accompanying article by R. Radhakrishna focuses on aspects of the other major problem confronting Indian society: that of achieving a level of economic performance over the coming years so as to achieve the target of reducing the percentage of population below the poverty line from its current level of around 40 per cent to 5 per cent by the turn of the century. Based on technical projections of likely movements in population, income, demand and employment, he points to the near impossibility of achieving this goal within the current strategy of development. That is, the faith in the trickle-down effects of the current path of development is not founded on any serious examination of the magnitudes involved. Policy makers in his view can within the current strategy merely work out welfare schemes that moderate the worst effects of poverty and unemployment. But if those problems are to be resolved satisfactorily, structural change and a reordering of the pattern of development is inevitable.