64 SOCIAL SCIENTIST THE PRESENT SITUATION After a welcome address by novelist Bhisham Sahni and chairman of the Trust and a brief history of Sahmat' s activities over the last 10 years by painter Vivan Sundaram, one of its founder member , the conference began with a statement of the communalist threat in South Asia today. Eqbal Ahmad (Pakistan), a professor of political science, history, politics and author of over 30 volumes of essays, was in a prime position to comment on his observations of communalist movements; in his first-hand role as a collector of information, that is, an academic, he has been witness to the divisive thought processes and organizational tactics of such groups from Algeria to India. In his talk on communalism in South Asia, he pointed out that these movements are products of modernity, not tradition, as reactions when society transitions from one mode of production to another. Communalist movements emerge as reactions to newthreats when old ways die out and newways have yet to solidify. These movements consist of those who react to change by becoming restorationists. A restorationist yearns to go back to an imagined past and recapture what is believed to have been lost. In their restorationist vision, communalist forces seek to control history. Addressing the situation particular to India, in his keynote address K.N. Panikkar, professor of history at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, described the tactics used by Hindutva forces, most notably the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its support organizations the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the Bajrang Dal, to recapture the imagined past. The past that they postulate is indisputably an invented history designed to disseminate the ideology of Hindutva and further its political influence. Yet the power of this invented history comes about in large part because the Parivar has an institutional network with which to disseminate their version of history. Professor Panikkar explained that while the marginalization and oppression of Hindus by alien rulers, both Muslim and Christian, has been to an extent internalized, "particularly by the middle class whose role in the making of public opinion is quite decisive," still the "dissemination of these ideas to a large section of the Hindu population is ensured by the Sangh Parivar through the network of institutions and channels of communication painstakingly set up during the last many years." The hand of these institutions extends into education, history, archeology, music, and the