66 SOCIAL SCIENTIST , viceroys)" and prophets (or mahatmas) accounts of mass activity. Through this process of addition a new, more complete, history covering "both a relatively elite and a more populist level... the complex interaction of these levels" (p 11) is sought to be porduced. But the mere expansion of historical craftmanship to include the masses in its scope of interest is democratic only in form. In the name of academic custom, professional expertise and a concern with examining complex interactions, such historiography too excludes active commitment to the mass struggles of the present. The mandarin vocabulary, sounding insignificant in itself, is in fact an ideological and political expression: 'tribal separatism', 'extreme left', 'terrorism', 'disobedience'- civil or otherwise, et al. "During the era of liberal capitalism, there is a specific relationship between the demands of the prevailing mode of production and the political function of historical knowledge. The relationship is not, however, direct or mechanical. It consists both of open intervention by the state and of diffuse ideological pressure. The historians are convinced that they enjoy 'freedom of expression9 but in their professional work they exhibit behaviour which is charactertstic of capitalist society as a whole19.29 Conventional historians with a pose of objectivity and a claim to be arriving at syntheses of complex interactions who view history as an autonomous intellectual activity moving in a kind of closed circuit where reference is confined mainly to other historians, perhaps unknowingly provide the smoke-screen behind which lurks the terminology and ideology of the police, the upholders of 'law and order'. For the mass of people, however, the past is meaningful only at the opposite and of social existence—where it becomes involved directly in their activities and struggles. But, what is really meant by the deceptively simple saying: "It is the masses who make history99 ? How do they make their influence felt? In-the first place by working. But there are few professional historians who concern themselves with the unspectacular routine of the people working. Generally, when work is considered at all it is taken for granted as legitmate social activity—the obligation of the people—and only disruption in its routine through strikes, hartals, bandhs, and 'non^cooperation', draws the attention of the professional historian to something having gone 'wrong' and hence having become noteworthy. However, the role of the people in history is not limited to spectacular outbreaks. And no history can be prepared from below without discussion of the people's continuous capacity to influence the course of events through day-to-day resistence just as much as through uprisings and revolutions. A knowledge of the past gives rise to both nostalgia and math, and it is upto the historian to decide for himself which he wants to emphasise. He can join the chorus of the ruling class and wail that "the spirit of the freedom movement needs to be revived9'or he can express