Although India and Israel differ dramatically in size, population, and affluence, there are many important similarities. Each is the contemporary vehicle of an old and resilient civilization that expresses a distinctive, influential and enduring arrangement of the various facets of human experience. Each of these cultures underwent a prolonged colonial experience in which its traditions were disrupted and subordinated to a hegemonic European Christian culture; each had an earlier experience with victorious, expansive Islam; each has reached an uneasy but flourishing accommodation with the secular, scientific modernity of the West.In each case this was achieved by a movement that embraced “Enlightenment” values and in turn provoked a recoil from modernity/rediscovery of tradition. In each there is a conflict between those with “modern” secular views of civil society and those revivalists or fundamentalists who seek to restore an indigenous religiously based society. The secular nationalism that predominated in the struggle for independence and the formation of the state is now countered by powerful tides of fundamentalism.

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Foundation, and the Development of Legal Education in India by JAYANTH K. KRISHNAN* On January 26, 1950 the Constitution of India came into effect. 1 Nearly two and one-half years after winning independence from Britain, India enacted one of the most detailed, rights-based constitutions ever seen in the history of the world. 2 The passage of such a democratic constitution was inspirational-not just for a country that endured centuries of both informal and formal colonial rule, but also for those in the West. Many American observers in particular looked on with awe as this economically poor, yet fiercely independent nation sought to embrace political and legal principles that had long been valued within the United States. The Ford Foundation-one of the world's leading philanthropic institutions based in the U.S.-soon also became infatuated with the promise and overall "idea of India." 3 For Ford, India exhibited great potential: its political and military leaders opted for democracy rather than dictatorship; its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a dynamic, Western-educated figure committed to economic development and modernization; and it retained English as a main national language, thereby giving Americans, who so desired, a better opportunity to work more