INDIAN STATE, SOCIAL CLASSES AND SECULARISM 53 systems and the contemporary state of India is the inheritor of all preceding major state systems especially the Hindu imperial states, the Mughal state and the British colonial state. Every successor state system in India inherited and continue with some of significant features and elements of the preceding state systems, the Indian state system is built on continuity and change. Thus the history of India is an integral part of Indian society and state. Second, this long evolution of Indian history is closely linked with the emergence of the different modes of production from tribal to feudal, to capitalism. The crises and contradictions of the various modes of production were resolved under specific historical developments of India. The feudal and capitalist modes of production have very significant Indian specificities because of the specific epochs of Indian history. Third, social relations, cultural values, belief systems and superstructural arrangements for managing the Indian society are also a product of Indian history and many belief systems and social values that have persisted for a long period in Indian society. Many essential value systems of Indian society were consolidated and strengthened and some other values were weakened and destroyed in the process of long historical evolution of India. But the values which have persisted are an integral part of the making of the contemporary Indian society. And these inherited social values, institutions and arrangements which determine social relations are in serious conflict with the modern values of democracy, secularism, social equality, scientific rationality and humanistic tolerance. Since history is an integral part of Indian political process, a brief discussion of Indian historical development may be mentioned here to properly understand the crisis of modern secular and democratic state of India. D.D. Kosambi maintains that when India developed from 'tribe* to 'society*, it was 'bogged down in the filthy swamp of superstition*. And 'superstition reduced the need for violence*.2 The pillars of Vedic-Brahman caste society were (a) superstition, (b) self-sustaining and close-knit village community, (c) caste system, and (d) religion, ritual and superstition. According to Kosambi, The cause of evolution has left its clear, indelible mark upon the complex Indian society of today'.3 An uninterrupted feature of Indian society is the persistence of religiously sanctioned rituals and norms of behaviour and social conduct.4 This long persistence of caste, ritualised and superstition-based religion in India was facilitated by a system of 'feudalism from above' which later on became 'feudalism from below* and this process helped in the evolution of the feudal state where 'feudalism from above* means a state wherein an emperor or powerful king levied tribute from subordinates who still ruled in their own right and did what they liked within their own territories—as long as they paid the paramount ruler. . . . What is meant by feudalism 'from below'