SOCIAL SCIENTIST one comes across so often, that secularism in the sense of a separation of politics from religion was rejected even by Gandhiji himself (which is supposed to show how "alien" it was in the Indian context). Irfan Habib traces the history of the "idea of India", i.e. of an inclusive notion of India transcending the particular universes of "the Hindus" or "the Muslims", or of this or that caste or region. He sees this idea taking shape and acquiring a conceptual substance over a long period, in contrast both to the communalists who deride this idea as being a mere latter-day manufacture, and to the colonial historians who (in an exactly similar vein) credit only colonialism with creating the conditions for the breaking down of particularities. The authentic realisation of this idea however requires, according to Prakash Karat, not only an ideological-political battle, but also a change in the material conditions of living of the people, the key to which lies in the democratic transformation of the agrarian relations, the unfinished task that EMS emphasised in writings spanning over half a century. An important component of this ideological battle is the struggle for the preservation and advance of secular-democratic education; K.N.Panikkar underscores the need for secular initiatives in this regard. Aijaz Ahmad draws attention to the immense brutalisation of day-to-day cultural life which has come in the wake of economic liberalisation, and which underlies inter alia the aggressive assertion of Hindutva. Prabhat Patnaik in a similar vein joins issue with those who see "liberalisation" as an antidote to communal-fascism; on the contrary, he argues, the two are dialectically related and proceed in tandem. E.M.S. Namboodiripad fought for a secular, democratic and socialist India till his last breath. It is only appropriate that we pay our homage to him by taking up these very themes that engaged him so passionately.