E M S JYAMBOODJRIPAD Class Character of the Nationalist Movement AUGUST 15,1947 marked tlie final solution of India's national problem if the problem is seen as merely one of investing the accredited leadership of the nation with the governance of the country. But the manner of the transfer of power showed that the national problem in its wider sense was getting complicated, rather than resolved: the unity of the nation cutting across the barriers of castes, religious communities, linguistic-cultural groups and tribes—the unity which was the ambition of the leaders and participants in the national movement to forge when hundreds of them laid down their lives for freedom—was being disrupted. Not only was the country partitioned, but the division between the two major religious communities, which led to the formation of the states, ended in one of the worst carnages in human history. This was so painful to the tallest leader of the nation and the Generalissimo of the national struggle, Mahatma Gandhi, that he publicly expressed his sense of disillusionment by dissociating himself from the countrywide celebrations at the attainment of independence. Ever since those days of joy mixed with frustration at the way in which independence was won, the relations between the two communites were more severely strained., almost to breaking point. Repeated instances of anti-Muslim riots in India and anti-Hindu riots in Pakistan marked