86 SOCIAL SCIENTIST i Roy and his 'worthy successors* of the Young Bengal Group who 'stood for a total rejection of Hinduism as they considered it irrational and superstitious*. (What Panikkar does not mention here is that even the radicals of the radicals, the Derozians, did share the 'moderate* and conservative* assumptions like the concept of Muslim tyranny3). At another level Panikkar finds that there was a shift in the character of the religious protest and reform movements from the pre-colonial period to the colonial period. In the earlier period, such movements (for example, the Bhakti movement) were trapped in the web of religious salvation; in the latter, the emphasis shifted away from salvation and it was on the civil use of religion, that is, the indigenous reformers of the colonial period sought religious sanction to fight 'what religion itself has brought into existence'. In short, according to Panikkar, 'The rationalist and humanist ideas that emerged in colonial India have bequeathed to us two important legacies. First, a struggle to develop a system of belief and social practice regulated by reason through rationalist critique of religion and social mores. Second, an attempt to de-emphasise other-worldliness and to focus attention on the reality of material existence.' However, this march of rationalism and reason could not find its full fruition during the colonial period. It got distorted and had to suffer a terrible retreat especially from the late nineteenth century onwards. As Panikkar puts it, Given the ambivalent attitude towards the West, the contestation* with colonial culture (by the indigenous intellectuals) remained at a superficial level; it did not assume the character of a serious quest to come to terms with the intellectual and epistemological foundations of Western culture which were responsible for social progress and advance in knowledge. As a consequence, the Indian response became increasingly nativistic and assumed more of a defensive character than of struggle, (emphasis mine) That was how we missed being rational. And Panikkar locates the roots of the present obscurantism, at least partly, in this 'distortion and retreat'. With this reading of the colonial intellectual history, Panikkar presents a critique of the 'Indian* notion of secularism which is characterised by 'an equal recognition of all religions' and 'non-discrimination against the followers of all religions.' This kind of secularism keeps religion in play and enhances religiosity and preserves religious identities. Here Panikkar suggests, 'the only way out . . . appears to be frontal confrontation with religion—an all out critique of religion, with a view to its eventual negation. . .'. Here, Panikkar finds the nineteenth century intellectual universe to be of promise. He writes, 'It is in this context the critique of religious system initiated by bourgeois ideologues during the colonial period assumes importance. It is a tradition worth invoking as it would provide the