2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST forces in contemporary India precludes the possibility of a fascist resolution* is too strong to be by-passed, particularly at a time when parliamentary democracy is seen to be eroding pretty fast. Nor can the tendency of the 'secular* ruling party to toe a 'soft saffron line* be overlooked. On the other hand, to what extent authoritarian or fascist tendencies within the ruling classes will saffronise themselves is a question the resolution of which will obviously depend upon several different factors. One may turn back here to the earlier chapter of this argument in Social Scientist No. 238-39 and Prabhat Patnaik's article The Fascism of our Times'. That article attempted to assess the possibilities of religious fascism capturing state-power in our country while putting it in the context of international economy and the relative success of big capital today in flowing across national boundaries. This situation was pointed out to be quite different from that which preceded the classical pursuit of fascism with severe fragmentation of capital. The problematic of that article has not been ignored by the contributers to the present volume. The shift from state-controlled to market-induced capitalist development, Javeed Alam points out, is likely to generate discontent which on the one hand will provoke greater authoritarianism and on the other, get defected into various kinds of chauvinistic politics. The seeds of fascism are here. And yet difficulties are also perceived in religious fascism seeking to turn its ideology to a national agenda. As Aijaz Ahmad points out: 'the fundamental weakness of RSS and its fronts is that they are formations of a conservative right, not of radical right'. It lacks the class-radicalism of classic fascist parties and as its acquiescence with unrestricted entry of foreign capital and with programmes of structural adjustment is near-total, it cannot project an alternative economic programme such as we find accompanying the Khomeini-ite takeover. Hence its preoccupation with symbolic issues and its floundering on economic questions. Both Aijaz and Javeed again taking cue from Gramsci, posit the necessity of a 'national-popular front' as offering an alternative combative politics. Aijaz's critique of the 'left' is that the very model of anti-fascist mobilisations during these years has been 'essentially local and dispersed, even mutually discrete, with none of the advantages of initiative that moments of concentration bring'. This problem is implied in Javeed's presentation also. Javeed at the same time clearly points out that the alternative does not die with the 'votaries of community rights'. These rights are basically incompatible with democratic rights of the individual. Aijaz goes as far as to say that the 'logic of secularism, the logic of democracy would take us, step by step to communism . .. the only realistic resolution of conflicts once the issue of justice has been posed'. MALINI BHATTACHAR^YA