Author Description

Interrogating Politics and Society: Twentieth-Century Indian Subcontinent broadly addresses three themes relevant to South Asian history: communalism, nationalism and the social underworld. Focusing on communal riots and patterns of communal mobilizations in twentieth-century subcontinent, the essays in this volume enrich our understanding of an issue that continues to plague our body politic. Bengal's involvement with India's freedom struggle highlights an intermingling of mainstream nationalism and various forms of protest politics, a theme which has also been dealt with in the volume. In examining the underworld of Bengal, Interrogating Politics intermingles social history and political history. By way of new insights on crime and criminality, the book studies the goondas, a part of Calcutta's underworld, and the dacoits of nineteenth-century rural Bengal. Hopefully, this volume will renew an interest in political history at a time when in current Indian historiography academic preoccupations lie with economic and social history and interdisciplinary studies. It should be of interest to both practitioners of history and the general reader.