Historic civil disobedience movement in Andhra from 1930-1934.

This book explains how access to and use of land, water and language helped shape Andhra politics in India from 1850 down to the present day. After independence, the debate over land reform and policies on irrigation has shaped the fortunes of various governments, while the debate over the make-up of the language-based state has stimulated separatist movements like the one in support of Telangana. The book discusses how British innovations in irrigation in coastal Andhra in the mid-nineteenth century transformed the economy there from food crops to cash crops, and created new markets for local entrepreneurs. This stimulated increased education and social reform in the region, which in turn supported new politics in search of constitutional concessions. The drive for a Telugu language-based province then arose in concert, and those political resources were then used to determine local patterns down to independence. The 1930s ruse of the socialists, then the communist organisations, was an extension of land and water tax debates, which impacted the political nature of development — both before and after — independence. This is one of the first books on Andhra that recounts this story and is based on extensive archival research exploring the deep relationships between land, water, language and politics. It would be of primary interest to those studying modern nationalism in India, natural resource management, Indian politics and economic growth.

The press occupies a pivotal place in the modern society. It has become not only a powerful medium of mass communication but also an influential political and social institution. It has been recognised by to all the civilised countries that the press plays a vital role in moulding the public opinion and also in expressing it. The press in India playeda crucial role in rousing the spirit of nationalism among the people of India and also in fulfilling the nationalist aspiration of liberating India from the foreign rule. R.C.Majumdar in his Struggle for Freedom in the Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan series, remarks that "the press imbued the people with patriotic fervover, indomitable courage and heroic self-sacrifice to an extraordinary degree". A number of works have been published in India and abroad describing the freedom movement in India at the national, regional and district levels.

The Noncooperation Movement of 1920-22, led by Mahatma Gandhi, challenged every aspect of British rule in India. It was supported by people from all levels of the social hierarchy and united Hindus and Muslims in a way never again achieved by Indian nationalists. It was remarkably nonviolent. In all, it was one of the major mass protests of modern times. Yet there are almost no accounts of the entire movement, although many aspects of it have been covered by local-level studies. This volume both brings together and builds on these studies, looking at fractious all-India debates over strategy; the major grievances that drove local-level campaigns; the ways leaders braided together these streams of protest within a nationalist agenda; and the distinctive features of popular nonviolence for a righteous cause. David Hardiman's previous volume, The Nonviolent Struggle for Indian Freedom, examined the history of nonviolent resistance in the Indian nationalist movement. The present volume takes his study forward to examine the culmination of this first surge of struggle. While the campaign of 1920-22 did not achieve its desired objective of immediate self-rule, it did succeed in shaking to the core the authority of the British in India.

A masterpiece of British Indian literature in a vibrant modern English translation