BOOK REVIEW 73 Between independence and the Jubilee Year there have been various twists and turns in internal politics as well as in the correlation of international forces: The rapid growth of the Soviet Union's economic and military power was accompanied by equally epoch-making advances in the European people's democratic states, as well as in China. Here therefore was a new world, a rapidly growing world of struggle against capitalism, and which was prepared to give as much help as possible to such newly independent developing countries as India. These changes in the world situation were taking place in an internal situation in which ...the heroic struggle waged by the rural masses ofTelangana and several other (though much less spectacular) struggles, as well as the magnificent electoral victories won in the 1952 general elections by the Communist Party in the states of Travancore-Gochin, composite Madras, West Bengal and Tripura showed that the advance of the socialist camp in the international world was having its impact on the internal politics of India. 2 Mendacious Leftism and Non-Alignment These changes necessitated a reappraisal of internal and foreign policies and brought about the Congress Party's leftist' stance. In foreign affairs non-aKgment which in the beginning was a cover for alignment with imperialism was subsequently transformed into an instrument of bargaining with both the camps, and thereby opened a phase of what is called the "Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai'5 and "Rusi-Hindi Bhai Bhai" politics. The Telangana peasants5 armed struggle which "should have continued not with a view to overthrow the Nehru government but for defending the land that was seized in the course of the anti-Nizam struggle and for persuading the Union government to agree to a negotiated settlement55 led to a complete reappraisal of the socio-economic forces operating in the country, resulting on the one side in the Bhoodan movement and on the other in land reforms and the Congress slogan adopted at Avadi of the 'Socialist Pattern of Society5. These changes along with the various political splits and shifts are covered in 13 chapters. The Avadi socialist pattern had nothing to do with socialism. However it did confuse both the right and left opposition. When the Second Plan frame was drafted by experts from socialist countries who "joined the bourgeois experts of the Government of India55, it caused a great debate within and outside the Congress. While it led to the formation of the Swatantra Party on the right, failure to understand the complex character of the shift created ideological confusion within the left opposition which gave rise to differences even within the Communist Party. A section, which took a superficial view of the apparently anti-monopoly and anti-landlord measures adopted by the Congress Party and its government, failed to note that even these measures were essentially in the interests of the very classes and strata against whom they were supposed to be directed. "Not only did they help the ruling classes