60 SOCIAL SCIENTIST long ago to big capital in exchange for the benefits summed up above. Today, the final war for regaining "the key to further development of the region" involves "the decisive battle with the monopolies" which will be fought by the broad masses of Indian workers and peasants. "The Assamese middle class can expect to bring about the needed transformation of the economy and society of this region only if it takes its place on the side of the toiling masses95.5 No one will disagree with the author on this particular point. But Gohain expresses his doubts in a subtle manner on this potential oppositional role of the Assamese middle class, since its fear of 'outsiders' has assumed the form of acute xenophobia and deep distrust of leftist politics. He has almost come to the conclusion that it has exhausted its revolutionary potentiality. There has been no urbanization in Assam and practically no development of a scientific modern outlook even within the so-called modern elite. These facts and the fear of being swamped by 'outsiders' are further used by Gohain to explain the situation wherein the middle class has been reduced to a pathetic appendage of big capital. From that position only, it occasionally blusters about in bursts of "pent-up frustration in acts of desperate and short-winded extremism."® Hiren Gohain, therefore, concludes on this basis that as in the national freedom movement, Assam will be a little late in joining the struggle against bourgeois-landlord rule, with the middle class acting as a buffer between radical ideas and the working masses. . .revolutionary parties must exert their pressure by spreading Marxist ideas and building up cadres in the teeth of raging reactionary conspiracy to lure away the youth of this region. (Emphasis added)7 This, in our understanding, is the sum and substance of Gohain's thesis. II Some Points of Difference It appears that Gohain uses the terms 'middle class' and 'regional bourgeoisie5 interchangeably throughout his paper. This, we feel, leads to some confusion. The regional, or, for that matter, any other bourgeois must be an owner of capitalist property, involved in production and engaging in exploitation in a capitalist framework. As opposed to this, the 'Assamese middle class9 emerges from Gohain's essay as a group which is distinguished by the fact that it does not exercise mentionable ownership and control over productive capitalist property. One does find in Assam a handful of local, indigenous, 'son of the soil' capitalists, particularly among the tea planters. Nevertheless, those who do make a pretence of being 'Assamese capitalists' are few and far between, and even they, lacking sufficient capital, are so inextricably linked with 'outside' big capital as to be nothing more than "agents of their monopoly."8 During the British rule, "with trade and commerce in the hands of merchants from outside, the Assamese middle class had only two sources of income: service