BOOK REVIEW €9 comprehensible. But when a trained historian, with the advantage of hindsight, chooses to echo the same viewpoint, it becomes a case of fatal naivety, There are a few redeeming features in the book. The prose is lively and moves swiftly. Credit is also due to Seal for the selection and processing of a number of useful tables on education and related subjects in spite of the fact that much of the work was done for him by the Indian Statistical Institute, The one unimpeachable statement made in the book is : "The highly uneven nature of development in India has been reflected in the highly uneven speeds of political mobilization^ (p 23). Here, for once. Seal is treading on solid ground. Had he developed this line a little further it would have become clear to him that what appeared as internal rivalries and squabbles were really the regional variations of the movement, One wonders whether the purpose of the book is to establish the origins of nationalism, or whether the author has utilised the opportunity to disprove the existence of nationalism in India, JAYANT PRASAD & John Strachey, India, London, 1888, p 5, 2 Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian ^rationalism^ Cambridge, 1968, p 339. 3 Geoffrey Barraclough, (< The Liberals and German History: Part IP', New Tork Review of Books, Vol XIX, No 7, November 2, 1972, p 32. * Seal writes : "activities inconvenient to the British were judged to be self-interested machinations rather than genuine nationalisms''' (p 191) and <<^ . » the apologists of British rule were hardly mistaken in asserting that it (the national movement) did not square with the genuine nationalisms of nineteenth century Europe" (p 342), 5 AdamB Ulam, The Unfinished Revolution, New York, 1960, p 193, Q V G Kiernan, "Farewells to Empire : Some Recent Studies of Imperialism", The Secialist Register, 1954, p 269. 7 V Chir.ol, India, London, 1926, p 187. 8 SeeJ A Gallagher and R E Robinson with Alice Denny, Afrwa and the Victorians, London, 1961. 9 Henri Alleg, in "Perspectives of the National Liberation Movement", Marxism Today, Vol 13, No 9, writes in a different context; "The science of Marxism-Leninism is considered as inapplicable to the realities of the third World and with this goes the denial of the existence of class differences within the country and the refusal to analyse the conditions in the third world countries on a class basis." p258. 10 J H Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society. California, 1958, p 6. He writies further ; (< They were distinguished by many aspects of their behaviour—their deportment, their speech, their dress, their style of housing, their eating habits, their occupations and their associations—and quite as fundamentally by their cut* tural values and their sense of social propriety," 11 ^ee T B Bottomore, Elites in Society, London, 1964, pp 48-53. 12 Hamilton to Curzon, October 20, 1899, cited in Anil Seal, op. cit., p 282. 13 Lewis Namier's outstanding work, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III was a microscopic analysis of the nature of the composition of parliament. Such structural analysis cannot be used for wider and general historical themes*