What was the hardest part of Nehru's tenure as president, a French journalist once questioned? Making a just society with just methods, he responded. Making a secular republic in a religious nation, he continued. These two initiatives seem to be in danger right now. This book provides a historical overview of the political factors that have shaped modern India to the situation in which we now find ourselves. For lack of an indigenous counterpart, it begins by establishing these political categories of left, right, and far-right before discussing movements of forces to the left or to the right from the balance of socio-political forces or the status quo at a particular period in India. It brings back historical details and employs chronological sequence for clarity and leaders? names and political parties, their world view and ideas of nation, social groups they represented, and their movements. It progresses by reopening only a few windows to modern Indian history and looks at periods like, the 1920-30s, and 1970s-80?s, when there were significant movements and consolidation of socio-political forces to the right and far right. At the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were a series of policy proposals, legislations to nationalize assets and launch direct attacks on poverty that marked a sharp turn to the leftist ideology in Delhi (the central government of the time). About the Author Anuradha Kalhan has a Ph.D. in Economics. Kalhan has taught in Mumbai for three decades. She was an elected member of the Senate in the University of Mumbai, and a fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. Currently, she is an independent writer and re?searcher, and has published two books and numerous papers. She spends?her?time?between?India,?USA?and?the?UK.