Editorial Note, Jan-Feb, 2020

We take as the lead article in the current number of Social Scientist the Presidential Address by Zoya Hasan to the Contemporary India section of the Indian History Congress that was held recently at Kannur. The paper traces the decline of the concept of inclusive nationalism that had informed India’s anti-colonial struggle and had held sway for long, and its replacement by a majoritarian Hindutva ‘nationalism’ that is at complete variance from it; in particular it underscores the inability of caste mobilisation, as had occurred in the wake of the Mandal Commission and had appeared for a while to check the march of Hindutva, to provide a durable counterweight to it. The author however sees the Hindutva project of ‘one nation, one culture’ as facing formidable obstacles in view of the large size of the country and its amazing regional and cultural diversity.