BRIEF REPLY TO A CRITIC 63 doubt that religion has been used by the colonial powers and the bourgeoisie to subdue the masses. There is a large amount of Marxist literature analysing this oppressive function of religion and I did not see the need to add to this in the present study. Strange enough, while blaming me for taking up too many things at the same time, Susan Ram does not seem to appreciate that I limited myself at this point. There is, on the other hand, very little research on the question as to what extent religion has tried to express genuine protest and human aspirations. Even if the present study was not very rich in its results as far as this question is concerned, the need to go deeper into this aspect should be acknowledged. Towards the end of her review Susati Ram accuses me of a "serious misconception about the way a new ideology or world view takes root among the masses.55 She apparently assumes that I expect a straight and unwavering takeover of new values and that I measure the success of a movement by the extent to which such change in values is made explicit directly. But the quotations she uses disprove her own assumption. I am measuring the success of a movement by what the masses have achieved with its help— which is also the way how the people themselves look at it. I am only raising the question as to what extent also more abstract values, which are not directly reflected in action, do or do not get changed. The incomplete change in broader values has to do with the fact that ideology tends to focus on issues which are of direct economic concern to the people while it does not tackle directly their cultural values, their religion, their sense of belonging. The need to tackle the fields of "social organization and interpersonal relations, attitudes, education etc, insofar as these ^.re shaped by religious and cultural values'5 was already pointed out by me in the introduction (p XIII). The field study only confirms the ^ap which is left open here by both the ideologies, Gandhism and Marxism. So what is identified here is a task of political movements and the theoretical part on the ambiguities of cultural factors in development does give some insights into why this task is so very difficult. Since, obviously, the process of internalizing a new world view can neither be confined to the economic field nor can it limit itself to the level of rational argument alone, the emotional level and the field in which social relations are shaped have to be taken into consideration. It is therefore certainly necessary to include the question of childrearing patterns. In the West, social psycho-