66 SOCIAL SCIENTIST protests on such issues. The only issue that dominated the "political discourse during this period has been communalism and secularism and during the past few weeks whether the cause of Indian nationalism was served best by the BJP Government's bold measures in evicting the intruders (from Pakistan) into our side of the border or not. The Congress(I)'s only quarrels is that it would have inflicted a deeper wound on Pakistan had it been in power. There was hardly any political platform in our country, including the mainstream Left, which questioned the rationale of the war (or the war like situation) for the cause of Indian nationalism. And all these while, since 1947, we as a nation have got used to looking for heroes everytime when a crisis manifested in our civil society: In other words, what Gramsci describes as Ceasarism. Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and now Atal Behari Vajpayee. The slogan of able leaders. I am not too sure that this tendency is any different from what was witnessed in Europe: Hitler in Germany or Mussolini in Italy. Let me now conclude now by simply referring to an analysis on this aspect made by the Communist International as early as in 1928 where it talked about the general features of fascism: 1. Fascism constructs an economic basis for the organisational unity of large capitalists, rural exploiters and the urban petty bourgeoisie. 2. Fascism rapidly adopts a foreign policy of militarism and imperialist aggression. 3. Taking advantage of the weaknesses of social democracy, fascism mobilises an organised force of cadres from the urban petty bourgeosie and the backward sections of the working class. 4. In the stage of siezure of power, fascism adopts populist slogans against capitalism, but soon after it captures power, it comes under the sway of big capital. 5. In place of liberal democracy, fascism establishes a structure of direct authoritarian rule. I need not elaborate any further on how these 'general features5 can be traced in the post-independent political discourse of India. Indeed, the last feature, of fascism replacing the liberal democratic structure with a direct authoritarian rule has not yet been accomplished in our country. But then, we have heard such proposals in the last couple of years; an idea to replace Parliamentary Democracy with a Presidential form (where an able leader could take over as President); then there is the manifesto of India's ruling combine now