2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST agrarian programme somewhat more than is historically possible for it to achieve. Likewise, the communists in the colonial period had crucial gaps in their understanding of and pronouncements upon the agrarian question, gaps whose elimination requires a prolonged and practical task of learning from experience. But, notwithstanding all the rhetoric of the Congress, and all the gropings of the comnrmists, th?s fundamental difference between two approaches, stemming from two distinct class-positions, is apparent, and that is what Suri's paper brings out. Contrary to what bourgeois ideologues today may believe or propagate, the agrarian question in India, even after four decades of independence, remains a burning question. The issues being discussed in the paper are not scholastic curios regarding dead-and-buried matters of history ; they still retain a crucial contemporary relevance. Yet another look at the history of the debate on the agrarian question, therefore, should be of interest to readers.