2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST "elitist bias" even in studying these struggles, which should be purged. In the process it has developed a new and specific historiographical perspective, underlying which, of course, are specific ideas about the nature of subaltern struggles and consciousness. These ideas and their ramifications have been extensively discussed in the pages of this journal. When the first volume of Subaltern Studies came out. Social Scientist took due note of this tendency by publishing a number of contributions, by Suneet Chopra, Javeed Alam, Partha Ghatterjee and Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, which assessed and debated the significance and moorings of this new tendency. In continuation of this interest, we publish as the lead article of the current number a contribution jointly authored by a group of young scholars from Delhi University which discusses the recently-published second valumc of Subaltern Studies. The article is divided into a number of sections, each of which deals with a particular paper of the Subaltern Studies volume; Ranajit Guha's paper in the volume, which sets the tone for the volume as a whole, is discussed in the first section where it is argued that Guha's perspective has idealist underpinnings and and differs in crucial respects from the basics of Marxist historiography. Sumit Sarkar's Modern India, in synthesising the massive historical data unearthed in recent years, also attempted consciously to break with the elitist bias in Indian historiography and to contribute to a "history from below". Arvind Das5 contention in the second review article of the current number is that this attempt has been far from adequate; the book is not sufficiently a "history from below". In establishing his contention, Das raises, by way of illustrations, a number of points relating to interpretations of recent Indian history which remain pertinent, no matter how one views his critique; at the same time he outlines his conception of a "history from below." This conception, and the historiographical perspective underlying it, may or may not find favour with other historians interested in a "history from below"; it certainly is rather different from the perspective which informs the lead article's critique of Subalturn Studies. Nevertheless, it is interesting and provocative enough to warrant serious discussion. Both these articles ^ throw up between them enough issues, and indeed enough contrasts, to give rise to what we hope would be a fruitful controvery. Finally, we publish a review article by Pratap Tandon on Kapil Kumar's book on the revolt of the Oudh peasantry against taluqdari oppression in the 1920s. The book, in recovering this significant historic! episode, had sought also to capture the texture of a peasant uprising, the complex relationship between the Congress and the peasantry as well as the contradictions of the national movement. The review article introduces the readers to the events and their interpretation contained in the book and joins issue with some of its formulations, particularly on the assessment of the role of religious leaders in peasant struggles.