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traditional nationalist version of communalism which treats communalism 'above all as an ideology', doesn't matter even if it throws in economy, class, false consciousness and what have you for good measure. For, fundamentally what it loses sight of is the class structure of Indian society and therefore the perspective that communalism is a strategy of the ruling classes; the solution to the problem does not therefore lie in sermonising on secularism to the people but in seeking to transform that class structure. The same perspective permeates his 'Vision for the Future', an intervention in a seminar organised by the ICSSR on the theme.
Professor Singh presents his arguments with force; passion and humour; these are also arguments combining, in the words of one of his students, both idealism and intelligence. His information is always remarkably up-to-date and he always turns his information into knowledge, and an instrument of social change. He also has the humility to realise the limits of intellectuals' effort to change society for a better future, for society will indeed be changed by those who need the change most. But 'we make our effort where we work, or we make no effort at all', as he so movingly puts it.
Salutary as Professor Singh's presentation is, some questions do trouble one as one goes along. With all the qualifications that he has added to the ultimately determining role of the economic base, it still involves the question of a kind of inverse teleology: the economic base would give the rationale of a phenomenon like communalism, for example, and transformation of that base should at least create the conditions for the solution of that problem. We have the experiment of such a transformation in the socialist world and yet problems akin to communalism have remained intact there. The argument that the assumption underlying those experiments, that the change in the base by itself would change the consciousness of human beings, was a questionable one is valid by itself. It perhaps follows then that in social analysis there is no permanent hierarchy of causes, no ultimate rationale. This is not to argue in favour of factor analysis, but to suggest that each conjuncture may perhaps have its own hierarchy and therefore each may require its own solution of problems. Anyway, Singh's arguments wouldn't be worth the while if they did not provoke questioning! It is in this mode that he inherits the true legacy of Marxism.
There is a certain poetic quality about the pieces: the total absence of either bitterness or regret at seeing so much of failure of so much of what one had held dear, the t-efusal to bow to the innumerable opportunities of cooption offered by the system and above all the lyrical core of an undying optimism. It is therefore not surprising that Professor Singh's first book was a book of Punjabi poetry.
HARBANS MUKHIA Centre for Historical Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi