PEASANTRY, POLITICS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY 45 did its existence depend on the latter" (p 3) and where, secondly, the politics was "as modern as indigenous elite politics, it was distinguished by its relatively greater depth in time as well as structure." (p 4). Empirically the 'autonomous domain' of peasant politics is sought to be established on the basis of evidence which displays a consistent tendency towards resistance and a propensity to rebellion on the part of peasant masses, thereby outstripping the limits set by the ruling classes—'elites'. It is true as Ranajit Guha says that there is an "invariant notion of resistance to elite domination" (p 4) and this is due to, as he rightly remarks, the common condition of exploitation. It however seems clear from the history of popular revolts that the notion or actual fact of resistance is not necessarily dependent upon overcoming a certain type of outlook. Resistance is possible given any kind of outlook—modern or archaic. Exploitation and oppression have been a perennial source of revolts. Much before becoming aware of historical research, even as children, we had heard of slave revolts of exceptional daring and ferocious violence. The feudal age in India too, as elsewhere, is full of accounts of revolts. Most class societies have some history of revolts even if the people involved had not outgrown the limitations of their archaic consciousness. But to infer from the fact of such sporadic upsurges that the domain of politics underlying such revolts is autonomous is a highly questionable proposition. In the context of nationalist politics, apart from everything else, such a simplistic equation begs the question instead of providing a lead towards the historical evaluation of peasant insurgency and developing a correct revolutionary stand in the struggle for emancipation. There is a constant tension and discrepancy between the definition of the autonomous domain of politics and the location of its empirical basis. Because hundreds of thousands of peasant masses broke through the limits imposed by the 'elites' and took to militant action, as during Rowlatt Satyagrahaor Civil Disobedience Movement, what are we to assume from this? It is one thing to say, as Ranajit Guha does, and quite rightly, that one cannot look at such militant activity as a consequence of the influence or initiatives of the elites themselves and quite another to jump to far-reaching generalisations about the autonomy of peasant politics. Popular spontaneity can have contradictory historical consequences as can be clearly seen from the researches of Gyan Pandey and Partha Chatterjee. Partha Chatterjee shows that the mainsprings of political action located within the consciousness of the "peasant community" set the Hindus and Muslims apart from each other and at each other's throat and therefore can be looked as a divisive force. In the case Gyan Pandey reports, the same became the basis for growing militant unity in the