Editorial Note,Sep-Oct, 2016

As the lead article of the current issue of Social Scientist we publish the text of K.N. Panikkar’s Chukkapalli Pitchaiah Memorial lecture for 2016, where the author discusses the issue of nationalism. While anti-colonial nationalism in India succeeded in mobilising people against the colonial order and forging emotional links among them, it did little to overcome the contradictions that existed among them in terms of caste, class and religion; on the contrary, these contradictions got exacerbated in the period after independence, creating the conditions for an aggressive ‘Hindu religious nationalism’ to try to supplant the secular-liberal nationalism of our anti-colonial struggle that constitutes the foundation of our polity.