Religion, State and Education is a scholarly and critical exploration of some of the seminal issues of our times – issues of survival of a plural society grimly struggling to be reborn from a feudal order into a modern egalitarian industrial society. What adds a critical edge is the prospect of great innovations in science and technology which will transform the future of mankind. They are stunning events. If the twentieth century was hundred years of science, the twenty-first will, in comparative terms, be twenty thousand years of science. In all encompassing survey of the contemporary national scene, Challa Sitaramaiah identifies three cardinal issues that afflict the prospects of national progress. Issues of such moment receive his deep intellectual attention. The interaction between religion and modern secular education is one such. In the process, the learned author emerges as one of the eminent thinkers of our times deeply concerned with the permeation of issues of religion in policies of modern education and its inevitable politicisation; secondly, the use of ‘reservation’ as a convenient political tool of populism, and the progressive degeneration of the great public institutions which are intended to hold together civilised people. Each of them needs serious reflection.