48 SOCIAL SCIENTIST between men and women, between individuals of one caste and another, one race or nation and another. I do not mean that these ideational logics bring about changes in the material world automatically; the relation between ideas and the material world are always modulated by the dialectic of given structures and transforming human agencies. What I do mean is that ideas of equality in one domain lead necessarily to ideas of equality in other domains; that the logic of such ideas would take us—and should take us—far beyond the conventional confines of democracy or socialism or secularism; that the logic of secularism, the logic of democracy would take us, step by step, to communism itself—in other words, to that Utopian moment which is the only realistic resolution of conflicts once the issue of justice has been posed. Because, as I said, once the question of radical equality has been posed, nothing can escape the Utopian ends of that questioning. VII I do not think that the fascist tendency is quite equal to understanding that the intricacies of such Utopias and such questionings are at the heart of contemporary Indian political culture. Yet, my fear is that the climate of despondency and terror that prevailed in the period between the rath yatra and the destruction of the Babri masjid, and right into the flames of Bombay, might have persuaded us, at some level of minimalism within us, that perhaps the desiring of what we in fact want is Illegitimate, and that we should perhaps settle for much less, lest we lose all. From those trepidations, the electorates of U.P and M. P. have provisionally freed us. In this moment of reprieve, we can begin to imagine again. But, then, we also run the risk of imagining too much, too quickly. The main thing now, I think, is to take the pleasure of the reprieve but also to keep in view the prosaic fact that nothing much can change unless all of us, in our individuality and in our collectivity, change it over a very considerable period of time, by building communities of radical equality so that we may then legitimately speak of a 'Culture in Common', 'Customs in Common' and, yes, a 'Nation in Common'.