38 SOCIAL SCIENTIST (landlords and capitalists) who stood at the head of the national movement in all the provinces of pre-partition India. The failure of that class to unify all the castes, religious communities, linguistic-cultural groups and tribal communities into a single nation led to the notorious clashes and conflicts between Hindus and Muslims which culminated in partition. It was the very same classes that transformed themselves into the ruling classes in the two countries. The result is that, though differently and in different degree, the same problems of national integration made their appearance and are getting ever more intensified on both sides of the border. Things reached such a pass in Pakistan that its eastern wing (Bangladesh) has already seceded, while serious conflicts and clashes have have occurred in other provinces like the North-West Frontier and Baluchistan. In India too, as noted above, problems like Kashmir, Naga-land and Mizoram assumed serious proportions: so did those relating to the national language, the formation of linguistic states, the lag between the advanced and backward states and regions, the division of pov^er between the centre and the states, lead to tensions and conflicts. All this is over and above the caste and communal riots which have haunted us at every stage in post-independence years. Towards Peopled Democratic India At the root of what are called "problems of national integration" therefore lies the reality that the bourgeoisie that stood at the head of the national movement and which is in control of the economy and polity of the nation today is incapable of, and unwilling to a) break with imperialism, make India fully self-sufficient, enable it to stand on its own leg^ in every respect; b) sternly deal with those sections of India's capitalists and landlords who want to defend their narrow class or individual interests and are prepared 10 mortgage the destiny of the nation to foreign monopolies; c; uproot feudal and other forms of big landlord domination over the rural areas, distribute ihe land of these landlords among the landless and poor sections of the rural people; d) emancipiate the masses of rural and urban poor from the centuries-old grip of caste leaders, heads of religious institutions and other remnants of an outmoded society and help the mass of the people to shape their own future along the lines of genuine modernism; e) develop the national economy and modernize the national culture in such a way that, in a few yew years' time, our people can take their place among the most modern nations of the world. Such a reversal of trends in the socio-cultural, economic and political fields is necessary if the national problem is to be solved as it should be. This is what is envisaged by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) when it calls for the struggle for building a new People's Democratic India2 which includes, among other things, the following general propositions: