SOCIAL SCIENTIST which got realised with capitalism, and a possible modernity that could represent the embodiment of certain other Enlightenment ideas, which were left untapped after what got embodied, and which according to him constitute an "untapped surplus". Instead of turning our backs upon "modernity", he argues, we have to tap this "untapped surplus"; but the realisation of any alternative to the "entrenched modernity" requires according to him, among other things, an all-out struggle against imperialism which is out to swallow our civilisation. Alam's defence of "modernity" against its opponents, while it is extremely interesting, raises a number of issues which are in need of wider discussion. For instance the relationship of his argument with the Marxist problematic, as commonly understood, remains unclear; indeed even the place of the concept of "modernity" within such a problematic is a matter that requires further examination. To initiate a discussion on these issues we publish in this number a long review article by Sasheej Hegde on Alam's book India: Living with Modernity, where Alam has discussed a number of issues, such as nationalism, communalism, democracy, and Inda's post-independence political history from his theoretical perspective. Finally we publish a study by Indrani Sen on the construction of women in some of Rudyard Kipling's literary texts. In his writings concerned with the white woman in the colony, Kipling generally perceives the power of white female sexuality as a threat to the maintenance of colonial power relations and gender hierarchies. While in this respect he echoes perhaps the views that were quite pervasive among his contemporaries, he is, intriguingly, somewhat more understanding in some of his writings about the Indian woman. The reason for this difference, according to the author, may have more to do with his perception of the Indian women as unthreatening for the colonial project, than with any questioning of racial prejudices, though on rare occasions he does appear to contest such prejudices.