STATE AND COMMUNALISM IN INDIA 23 of preferential and discriminatory treatment of different religious communities. Second, the British recognised the complexities of Indian society and they followed a policy of neglect and non-interference in many areas of the social life of Indians. The consequence of this dual strategy of active encouragement and neglect was reinforcement of obscurantism, religiosity and caste feeling among the Indians, and the post-independence state of India inherited this legacy of religious backwardness and religious conflicts. (ii) While the Indian national movement was a struggle for the emancipation of India from foreign rule because foreign rule was responsible for India's underdevelopment and exploitation, a section of Indian society did not relate their poverty and deprivation to British rule; they viewed deprivation and poverty in religious community terms. Since 1858, the British rule in India brought religion-based policies to the centre-stage of governance. Preferential and discriminatory policies were practised and an accommodative nationalism and religious excluvism developed side by side. Grievances against the British rule and its policies were projected in national terms or in terms of the grievances of a community. The 1940s witnessed the heightening of the nationalist challenge to British rule, the acceleration of community grievances and the ultimate emergence of the British as mediators between the nationalists and the separatists. This is the context of the post-independence state of India. POST-INDEPENDENCE STATE OF INDIA (i) The post-independence state 1s' a democratic or representational state, it is a federal state, it is a transformational state, it is a secular state, and it is a state which is committed to the goals of gradual capitalist modernisation of India. (ii) The relationship between state and society in India is quite complex and reveals many contradictions. The state is trying to do many things through rules, regulations, the bureaucracy, modern information technology and socio-economic and socio-cultural programmes to mould society. Society has many rules, codes and traditions, and regulations of its own. Many segments of society live by their own symbols, rituals, memories and inherited social regulatory mechanisms. The state absorbs or assimilates multiple cultural streams but its limitations of assimilation or absorption became clear in the face of societal resistance. The Indian state does not enjoy loyalty when it is perceived as an oppressor in areas of traditional loyalty, e.g. controversy over the Muslim Personal Law in 1985 and the Blue Star Operation of 1984.