2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST relationship between the Hindu nationalists of the yesteryears and the Hindutva brigade of today is of course debatable. Though the latter claim their lineage from the former, the fact remains that the former, everything said and done, were anti-imperialist in a way that the latter under no circumstances can even be mistaken to be. Nonetheless, to grasp the phenomenon of Hindutva we have to go back to the soil bequeathed by the Hindu nationalists; and Muralidharan's article is welcome in this context. But no matter how one views the relationship between the Hindu nationalists of yore and the Hindutva brigade of today, there is one common element of the situation between then and now, and that is the propensity of the Congress Party to capitulate before such tendencies. The recent capitulation before the Hindutva forces is manifested not just in its supineness in the face of their onslaught, but even in an acceptance of many of their arguments on the history of the Babri masjid and of the conflicts surrounding it. This fact is brought out vividly by Sushil Srivastava in his article on the two white papers, one by the BJP and the other by the government, brought out recently on the Ayodhya outrage. M.S.S. Pandian's article examines the transformation of the 'Dravidian ideology* from the mere intellectual output of a tiny group belonging to the Vellala elite to a radical agenda capable of deeply influencing the politics of the masses. He does so by focussing primarily on the writings of Maraimalai Adigal and E.V. Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy's success in mass politics, according to the author, sprang from the fact that he broke with the early 'Dravidian ideology* in two crucial ways: first, he established Hinduism as constituting multiple relations of power, and not merely caste relations as conceptualised earlier, which opened the way for the movement's articulating the grievances of a whole range of subordinate social groups; and second, he emphasised the need for active political intervention by these groups for their own self-emancipation which freed the movement from Saivite paternalism. Finally, we have a contribution by C.P. Bhambhri to the ongoing debate on the Indian State where he not only underscores the attack on the State from imperialism but takes to task the 'infantile romanticist* critics of the State from within. The debate on the State has acquired fresh relevance in the context of both the demolition of the Babri masjid and the launching of the New Economic Policy.