34 SOCIAL SCIENTIST the internal political situation within the two countries while tensions, conflicts and even wars marked the relations between the two states. During free India's first five months, which it was left for Mahatma Gandhi to live, he raised his feeble voice at the iragic turn of events which was capped by the dastardly, murderous attack to which he fell victim. It was however not merely a question of Hindu-Muslim relations. Other problems of national unity like casteism, linguistic divisions, and the position of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, also became more and more complex. Unrest broke out on many of these questions: language riots in Assam; anti-PIindi upsurge in Tamil Nadu; separatist Telangana and Andhra movements in Andhra Pradesh. The situation became so serious that the Government of India thought it necessary to convene what was called a National Integration Conference, form a National Integration Council and set up several NIG sub-committees to deal with specific problems of 'national integration'. Setting the Stage for Collaboration Thus far about the national problem in its internal aspect, of forging national unity. With regard to its external aspect, namely, India's subjection to the foreign rulers being put an end to, post-independence developments were not so rosy as they appeared when power was handed over by the British overlords to the national leaders. For, what was transferred on 15 August 1947 was nothing but formal administrative power which, as is well-known, is different from real power over the national economy. While the new Government of India was formally free to arrange its affairs—internal and external—as it liked, power had been made over on the basis of a compromise between the foreign monopoly capitalists on the one hand and the Indian landlord-capitalist classes on the other. The latter, being primarily interested in developing the economy, polity and the socio-cultural life of India along capitalist lines, wanted to continue the process initiated under British rule, develop capitalism without shattering the feudal and precapitalist institutions at the base and enlist the services of the dominant classes and strata of precapitalist society. They also continued India's economic ties with foreign monopolists with the difference that, while the foreigners who controlled the national economy were almost exclusively British, independence meant that monopolies from other capitalist countries, mainly United States and also West Germany, Japan, France and elsewhere, started penetrating the national economy, even though the British hold was retained. The result was that, despite resistance from sections of the ruling classes on occasion and the links that have of late been forged with the socialist countries, the grip of foreign monoply capitalists on our economy has been getting tighter and tighter. This increasing control of foreign monopolies on the national economy is reflected in external political relations, since economic