2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST considered the British as its prime target. The reasons for this difference, as well as for the fact that the Rangpur uprising was a brief outbreak while the Fakir-Sannyasi rebellion was a sustained, long drawn-out struggle, lay in the differing social compositions and outlooks of the combatants in the two cases. The perception of the Fakir-Sannyasi rebellion was informed by a sense of loyalty to the pre-British, traditional ruling class. This gave the rebellion a contradictory character: on the one hand, it was backward-looking; on the other hand, however, it was far more comprehensive and total in its challenge to British authority. The note by Uma Chakravarty gives a brief but fascinating analysis of the discussion of the role of women in early Indian society which is to be found in nationalist historiography. In their eagerness to counter the influence of writers like James Mill who had not only denigrated Hindu civilisation but had dwelt specifically on the object role of women in Hindu society, authors in this tradition tended to glorify the role of women in early Indian society, and to attribute the subsequent fall in their status to a variety of later developments, including, in some cases, the onset of Muslim rule. Chakravarti who takes up Altekar's study for special analysis shows both how the idealisation of the role of women in the Vedic age had little concern for historical verisimilitude, as well as how the ideal picture itself was the product of a peculiarly flawed perception. And finally, we publish a note by Seemanthini Niranjana which analyses popular magazine fiction and draws attention to its role in 'fixing the parameters of popular discourse within which social issues are raised and resolved*.