62 SOCIAL SCIENTIST against any place of worship. Political executives in India have adopted many manipulative strategies to deal with the power of clergy. It has adopted the strategy of dividing the clergy. It has allowed the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board to mobilize the traditional 'Qazis' or religious adjudicators by assuring that the state will not intervene in Muslim Personal Law. The modernising and reformative state of India has adopted an extremely cautious and gradual approach towards social traditions which have religious sanction. The Shah Bano case proves the weakness of the modernising state to push a reform which would alienate a religious community because the clergy enjoy more legitimacy than the democratic, secular and reformist state of India. Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communalists are successful in bringing religion into politics because the ugly side of democratic politics is observable and apparent to every one, but religion's lack of solution's for social problems is not clearly understood by the religious believers who are guided by the teaching of the priests. (2) The social contradictions of Indian society are also mediated by the historical specificities of India. The dominant mode of production in India is capitalism and the power of the exploiting classes can be challenged only by the united efforts of the exploited working masses of India. Are the Indian exploiting classes and the state confronted with a serious and powerful challenge from the exploited classes? This issue can be analysed by focussing attention on the role of the capitalist class, the peasantry, the proletariat and the potentialities or limitations of the accommodative capacities of the Indian state. Mao Zedong's Peasant Revolution in China inspired many Indian revolutionary struggles beginning with the Telengana Peasant Uprising of the Communist Party of India and many Marxist-Leninist-Maoist groups who discovered revolutionary potential in the Indian peasantry. The armed struggles of the People's War Group in Andhra or Maoist Groups in Bihar or in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh and their strategies of 'liberated areas' brings into sharp focus the role of peasantry in India. A few important questions regarding peasantry may be examined for understanding their role in India. It is correct to maintain that the Indian peasantry is internally differentiated but it is premature to conclude from this that the rural oppressors and oppressed are involved in a polarized class struggle. Caste and community feelings mediate in a very powerful manner in peasant consciousness in India. It is also wrong to maintain that the Indian peasant understands the nature of national contradictions and has evolved a proper class perspective of revolutionary development. The Maoists have a romanticised view of peasant virtues and peasant consciousness. Peasantry in India is not only internally differentiated, it is fragmented on the basis of religion, caste, language, region and sect.