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for one do not regard speculation regarding the time frame to be in
order. As a Hindu I believe in the ineluctable power of the time
spirit: Mahakala will deliver on time -- neither earlier nor later.
What is material is that the country is well set on that road, and
while there may be, indeed there shall be, setbacks, these will be
temporary. History zigzags; it never moves in a straight line. But
it moves, and according to a pattern.
An epochal change, it is hardly
necessary for me to point out, cannot take place unless the existing
order has more or less exhausted its beneficial potentialities, and
the new order has been in the making for quite some time. Unknown to
us and invisible to us, the two processes are more or less
simultaneous. This has been the case in India, as I hope to be able
to show. The subject is extremely complex and I cannot possibly do
anything like justice to it for a variety of reasons. This would
have been the case even if I was concerned only with the post-
independence period, or the freedom movement. But I am concerned
with a whole millennium. So you can imagine the difficulties I face
in working out and presenting a theory which is reasonably coherent,
intelligible and acceptable. Before I proceed further, I might add
that in such a framework, there is, at the intellectual level, not
much scope for moral judgement and indignation, though all that is,
of course, valid at the political level.
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