Contrary to most works on the subject which treat the rural poor as an appendage of their urban co-religionists, this study concentrates on the evolution of mass awareness among the Muslims of Bengal, basing itself on an examination of the Bengali Muslim religious literature known as puthis. This work asks specific questions and develops the central thesis that for the Muslim masses, the reformist appeal of the Islamic revivalists proved a source of strength as well as of weakness: it roused them to action but made them susceptible to communal propaganda.