This is a re-issue of Amalendu Guha's influential work on Assam and the Northeast, 30 years after its original publication, with a new introduction by the author. Guha's analysis extends from Assam in 1826, the year of the British annexation, to the post-independence conditions in 1950. The peculiar features of the region's plantation economy; the imperialism of opium cultivation; the problems of a stready influx of immigrants and the backlash of a local linguistic chauvinism; peasants' and workers' struggles; the evolution of the ryot sabhas, the Congress, trade unions and later of the Communist Party - such are the themes that have received attention in this book, alongside an analysis of legislative and administrative processes.The narrative is structured chronologically within an integrated Marxist framework of historical perspective, and is based on a wide range of primary sources.

Arnab Dey examines the intersecting role of law, ecology, and agronomy in shaping the history of tea and its plantations in British east India. He suggests that looking afresh at the legal, environmental, and agro-economic aspects of tea production illuminate covert, expedient, and often illegal administrative and commercial dealings that had an immediate and long-term human and environmental impact on the region. Critiquing this imperial commodity's advertised mandate of agrarian modernization in colonial India, Dey points to numerous tea pests, disease ecologies, felled forests, harsh working conditions, wage manipulation, and political resistance as examples of tea's unseemly legacy in the subcontinent. Dey draws together the plant and the plantation in highlighting the ironies of the tea economy and its consequences for the agrarian history of eastern India.

Raja Rao's Kanthapura is one of the finest novels to come out of mid-twentieth century India.

The saga of the Indian National Movement; with its unique leadership and ideological foundation; continues to engage those interested in the history of India. Raj to Swaraj: A Textbook on Colonialism and Nationalism in India takes its readers through the panorama of modern Indian history; with all its trials and tribulations; and keeps it intellectually stimulating all through the narrative. This textbook for students attempts to present its case; free from ideological biases. The result of a lifelong engagement with teaching and research; this book incorporates the sharp classroom debates and analysis of bright and committed students; thus enriching its formulations and interpretations. It provides a fresh look at the national struggle for independence and attempts to provoke; promote and unleash; critical and creative thinking among the student community. In the process; it seeks to relieve them from the drudgery of working as intellectual foot soldiers to the authorities in our academia. This book marks a departure from the earlier studies in terms of its new and updated sources as well as in its freedom from the great ideological divides that continue to bedevil our academic life. As such; it avoids both the extremes of woolly sentimentalism and ideology-based debunking. Essentially eclectic and synthesising in its approach; and written in a lucid style; the book covers different phases and facets of our national struggle. To that end; it adopts a thematic; rather than a chronological narrative. The book will prove invaluable for students of political science and modern Indian history; as well as general readers.