SOCIAL SCIENTIST Significantly, such a strident nationalism is devoid of any anti-imperialist content. Instead, it is proving to be highly accommodative to the wishes of international finance capital and the MNCs. We will come to the implications of this later. It is in this specific context, that the Left and democratic forces must address the problems of national unity. There has to be a clear understanding that the fight against the BJP, to defend secular-democracy, encompasses the struggle to defend national unity. This unity based on the legacy of the freedom struggle and the common endeavours and aspirations of the people of various linguistic, religious and ethnic groups is today under severe attack. In fashioning the agenda for national unity, the Left must keep in mind the major changes in both the international and national situation. All the discussions on the national question in India by Marxists up to the eighties, naturally situated the issue in the international context of the struggle against imperialism when the socialist system was existing as a countervailing force. It was either explicit or implicit in their analysis that the process of nation-formation is taking place in India and the ex-colonial countries in the background of this bi-polarity between imperialism and socialism. Now the situation has changed drastically. Firstly, the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of bi-polarity. It has also had the direct consequence of disintegrating the multinational socialist states like the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Secondly, imperialism has been able to utilize this situation to mount an aggressive thrust which has both economic and political consequences. Capitalism through imperialist-driven globalization has penetrated and consolidated its position worldwide. The current of national liberation and anti-imperialist nationalism, so marked in the post-1945 period, is virtually dormant for the present. On the other hand, globalization directed by an immensely strengthened finance capital is breaking down national barriers and eroding the sovereignty and autonomous decision-making powers of the nation states. Imperialism in the post-colonial era has always sought to blunt anti-imperialist nationalism and weaken the integrity and independence of the new nation-states and the socialist states. The U.S. and its allies backed the ethnic-based nationalisms and separatist feelings whenever it suited their interests. The Cold War period was marked by this tactic. However, the nineties have witnessed a totally new situation. Freed of the constraints of the confrontation with the