This book explores the meanings and complexities of India's experience of transition from colonial to the post-colonial period. It focuses on the first five years - from independence on 15th August 1947 to the first general election in January 1952 - in the politics of West Bengal, the new Indian province that was created as a result of the Partition.
The author, a specialist on the history of modern India, discusses what freedom actually meant to various individuals, communities and political parties, how they responded to it, how they extended its...
This book explores the meanings and complexities of India's experience of transition from colonial to the post-colonial period. I...
The book seeks to situate caste as a discursive category in the discussion of Partition in Bengal. In conventional narratives of Partition, the role of the Dalit or the Scheduled Castes is either completely ignored or mentioned in passing. The authors addresse this discursive absence and argues that in Bengal the Dalits were neither passive onlookers nor accidental victims of Partition politics and violence, which ruptured their unity and weakened their political autonomy. They were the worst victims of Partition. When the Dalit peasants of Eastern Bengal began to migrate to India after...
The book seeks to situate caste as a discursive category in the discussion of Partition in Bengal. In conventional narratives of Partition, the role o...