Editorial

This issue of the Journal of IMS begins with a long essay on "Music and the Communal Divide - Art as an Alternative", penned by Dr. Sakuntala Narasinhan. The practioners of music in India have had a long history, and the later centuries, post 16th, shows social history influenced by political as well as religious upheavals, patronage and survival through religion conversions. The indigenous art of music became an inheritance of both the Hindus and the Muslim, and has stood the test of time. This background has been underlined by the author, in this essay, showing and advocating the cementing force, of the art, when the Communal Divide raises its head not so infrequently and influences the social fibre.