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on and goes straight to the sensual content. The rasa concept of Indian aesthetics has three primary associations of meaning:
1) As the object of perception by the sense of taste—rasana (emphasizing sensual relationship to arts).
2) As the essence of everything or any being—the earth is known as rasa as it holds the essence of life for all creatures (materialism).
3) As liquid or dynamic as opposed to solid or static (the inherent demand for movement, change, praxis). These arc live concepts in our culture still capable of activating the people. The tragedy is that progressive movements have failed to go to our own sources of culture to tap all those areas charged with energy and harness them to build up vitality in pcpole which, obviously, is important for changing conditions in life like any other revolutionary theory. This becomes all the more important when we see that cultural levels, at times, have the possibility of being far ahead of political levels and thus have the potential for initiating social change.
But, of course, we suffer as much today from conceptual poverty as from economic poverty and it becomes a task for us to formulate a theory of revolution that integrates all these levels.
CHANDRALEKHA
(This paper was presented at the seminar on Marxism and Aesthetics, held at Kasauli)