India is poised at a very critical point in its history. It can go either way: become a leader not only in a political-economic sense but even in a cultural sense; or plunge in an upheaval that is externally or internally engineered. Its democratic experiment to weld a nation out of disparate peoples-peoples of different religions, languages, colors, who are tethered to their tribal and feudal moorings with extremely strong bonds-is so far successful. Moreover it is modernizing and developing from a backward economic and political stage.