The death of Nehru did less to change the Indian political system than the talk about his charismatic leadership might have led us to expect. But one simplification is not to be replaced by another; the assessment of his influence is a matter of real difficulty. Most delicate of all the tasks perhaps is that of distinguishing between his influence on the actual behaviour of political actors and institutions and his influence on the views taken by observers of such behaviour. How much, that is, of what appears novel in the post-Nehru period is merely the coming to light of features which were already present but obscured or unnoticed by virtue of the attention focused on the great man himself? In no area of the Indian political system is this question more important than in the Congress Party.

The Chung-hua min-kuo tzu-yu tang or tzu-yu tang was named after the Japanese Jiyūtō which was conventionally known as the ‘Liberal Party’. However, in both Japanese and Chinese the word Jiyū/tzu-yu retained strong connotations of ‘liberty’ which have been lost by the word ‘Liberal’. It seems best therefore to leave the title untranslated.

Throughout the twenty years which followed 17 August 1945 when, as President of the newly proclaimed Republic of Indonesia, Sukarno first stepped into the limelight, he has provided the most flamboyant example of the ‘charismatic leader’ who, by personifying the aspirations of a formerly subject people, enables them both to establish and to project their identity as a nation. During this time Western well-wishers of the Indonesian people have been increasingly fascinated by his performance, which they have watched, often at first with sympathy and even admiration, later with disappointment and anxiety, and finally with astonishment verging upon incredulity.

There are several reasons for taking a special interest in Hao Ran's Yan Yang Tian (Bright Skies), a novel about the Chinese countryside of which Part One was brought out by the author's Publishing House, Peking, in late 1964 and Part Two by the People's Literature Publishing House in March 1966. The third and final part has yet to be issued. It is the first published novel by Hao Ran, a writer born in 1932 and chiefly known for his short stories. It shows that gloom about the state of contemporary Chinese writing is not always justifiable and, perhaps more significantly, gives a reasonably full and frank account of some critical days in the history of a Chinese village. In providing a very detailed record of the behaviour of a number of peasants in the collectivization movement, it does much to supplement the official reports in the Chinese press and the interpretations of outside observers. Not the least of the book's achievements is the creation in the village boss, Ma Zhiyue, of one of the most significant villains in modern Chinese fiction.