Accounting for change is the most vexed problem in the social sciences. In none of these disciplines do we yet have adequate explanations of why and how individuals, social systems, cultures, economies, or polities change — prospering, developing, transforming themselves, stagnating and sometimes succumbing. Yet to account for “historical” change requires just such prior accounts from psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics and political science. Furthermore, it involves the even more difficult question of how and why changes in each of these “units” of history affect and are affected by each other. Of all of these complex relationships between individual and social order, between economy and family, between culture and government, and so on, we now have only the most rudimentary models and maps. The problem of accounting for historical change, to which Dr. Wyatt addresses himself in his comments on Dr. Lifton's paper, will therefore not be solved in the near future. Nor will it, I suspect, be solved at all without profound transformations in each of the different fields involved. For truly to account for history will require within each discipline an as-yet-unachieved vision of men as simultaneously psychological individuals, social animals, cultural creatures, historical figures and economic and political men.

Professor Smith has produced a comprehensive survey1 of the relations between state and religion in India which will be of great value to students of modern Indian government and politics as well as of religion. Moreover, this useful, stimulating and very readable study raises questions of compelling, interest for all who are concerned with problems of “church and state”. India, the seat of a civilization renowned for elaboration of religious thought and pervasiveness of religious observance has, even by Professor Smith's rigorous standards, successfully established a secular state. In this volume, Professor Smith has undertaken to explain how this has come about, to analyze the Indian achievement and the problems that accompany it and, finally, to indicate how India may advance to the full realization of that “true secularism” which he so enthusiastically endorses.

I am greatly indebted to Professor Marc Galanter and Professor John T. Flint for their detailed and thoughtful reviews of India as a Secular State. One of the important objects of the book was to stimulate precisely this kind of serious discussion of problems, problems of both scholarly analysis and public policy. The two reviews are useful in sharpening certain of the issues, and I am grateful for this opportunity to comment on them.

Legal approaches to judicial development in the new states of Asia and Africa seem to be inadequate for at least two reasons. One is that we cannot assume a prior knowledge of the political and social factors bearing on the process of change in these countries. The second is that by emphasizing legislative aspects of development, the spotlight is shifted away from the institutions themselves. One way of meeting these two objections is to bypass momentarily the normal function of judicial institutions and to look at them first of all as organizations like any other with group interests to defend and ambitions to pursue. From that starting point, it is possible to get a glimpse of the politics and sociology of legal and institutional change.

Americans have traditionally recognized social mobility as a valuable and characteristic feature of their society. Constant movement up and down the ladder of wealth and status, it is generally assumed, stems naturally from our healthy insistence on equality of opportunity, on careers “open to talent”. A corollary belief, embodied in a faith in such a system, is that an egalitarian society will necessarily produce the strongest and most stable institutions.

Although all the forms of nationalism have undoubtedly certain characteristics in common, they could be logically divided into two distinct categories: 1) nationalism of majorities which hold political power in their respective realms, and 2) nationalism of the subject peoples which strive for political and cultural emancipation. This last category includes genuine minorities as well as political minorities, i.e., groups which may constitute majorities in their respective territories, but may find themselves in a position of minorities with respect to the states to which they belong. The dynamics of development of nationalism as an individual as well as social phenomenon is different in each case.