With important foreign statesmen arriving frequently on courtesy visits to India from East and West and with India’s voice respectfully heard at the international councils, the observer is left with the impression that Mr Nehru’s spectacular foreign policy is paying a high dividend and that Delhi is rapidly becoming one of the most important political centres of the world. Only on close scrutiny of the economic and social conditions does he get the impression of a scene reminiscent of Chancellor Briining’s Germany in the early thirties: a regime desperately trying to camouflage by real and imaginary diplomatic successes the fact that, domestically, it is sitting on a volcano.

In the cities the westernized ruling class—the British-trained civil servants and the American-inspired managing agency executives—seem to run the show at full swing. Although the shortage of technicians is still acute, there is a considerable tendency among the new generation to go in for scientific training. I was told by a university professor in Calcutta that the brightest students take up science these days.

Dr Deshpande, the Secretary-General of Hindu Mahasabha, the self-styled guardian of national traditions, assured me that the idea of a man working his way up—so essential to any industrial society—is by no means incompatible with the true principles of Hinduism; the rigidity of the caste system was the result of later corruption, but his Movement means to go back to the ancient sources.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no obstacle in the way of a new India, rising on the wings of modem technical production and re-invigorated Hindu tradition, utilizing vast, still untapped, raw material and manpower resources.