2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
colonial situation, continues to be highly controversial. The author's attempt to extend it forward, as it were, is likely to be even more so. Nonetheless, there is no denying the bold and stimulating nature of the argument he has advanced. And his call for a turn to history, to concrete studies of the structural mechanisms of pre-capitalist modes of production in the non-European world, must be universally welcomed. It is a concrete study of this sort that we present in R. Champakalakshmfs paper on urbanisation in South India. She focusses on two distinct and disjoint phases of urbanism in South India. The earlier phase spanning the period between the 3rd century B.C. and the 3rd century A.D. was essentially a result of external trade leading to the emergence of urban centres which were more in the nature of trade enclaves. The decline of trade around the 3rd century A.D. which ushered in a crisis in Tamil society also resulted in a discontinuity. The second phase of urbanism, what she calls early medieval urbanisation, can be located within the time-span of six centuries, between the 7th ^nd 13th, and differed in significant ways from the earlier phase. In outlining the social, economic and political transformations which resulted in the emergence of urban forms in this later phase, she specifically underscores the role of religious ideology as offering a "consensual focus for social life", both rural as well as urban. The validating ideology underlying both socio-political dominance as well as institutional permanence was provided by the concept of bhakti or devotion, and the instrument of authority through which it was expressed was the temple, which also played a crucial role in agrarian integration, organisation and expansion.
TAe 13th-14th centuries mark a divide in the urban history of South India when a new pattern of power-relations begins to evolve. As against the unitary culture of the Cola period, the trend is towards a militarisation and fragmentation of political power, which also entail a secularisation of political power, and also towards newer forms of economic hater-dependence stemming from the emergence of merchant enterpreneurs and master craftsmen. This last phenomenon opens up the question, which has relevance for Diptendra Banerjee's argument as well, namely, did it represent a step towards "proto-industrialisation" and even "proto-capitalism^ in pre-colonial India ?
Finally, we publish an account by Biswamoy Pati of the Malkangiri peasant revolt of 1942 which is of special interest because the author argues that the revolt was neither ba^ed on a narrow definition of nationalism, a,s attributed by many lo such peasant revolts, nor focussed on "autonomous" or local issues, as some historians of the Subaltern school would like to have us believe.