BOOK REVIEW 75
Europe, Latin America etc. But an individual bandit out growing his moorings to a full-fledged revolutionary is one thing and the revolutionary potentiality of any group or clan of bandits is quite another. Discussing a number of examples from many continents Hobsbawm concludes:
Politically, bandits wzre, as we have seen, incapable of offering a real alternative to th* peasants. Moreover their traditionally ambiguous position between the men of power and the poor, as men of the people but contemptuous of the weak and the passive, as a force which in normal times operated within the existing social and political structure or on its margins, rather than against it, limited their revolutionary potential. They might dream of a free society of brothers, but the most obvious prospect of a successful bandit revolutionary was to become Irke the gentry.18 Hobsbawm concludes:
Bandits belong to th* peasantry. If the argument of this book is accepted, they cannot b@ understood except in the context of the sort of peasant society which, it is safe to guess, is as remote from most readers as ancient Egypt, and which is as surely doomed by history as the stone Age.18
Certainly, the peasant society which breeds bandits is as remote as ancient E^ypt to JHob;bawm,ajid most of-his .readers. But is it so to his readers in India ? Doomed as it is like the Stone Age, we in India are still living in a society with large patches ajld sectors which breed bandits. Those who want to grapple with this complex problem, had better read Hobsbawm for perspective and policy. Arthur Marwick^s praise is not off the mark* '
P GOVINDA PILLAI
1 Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History, Mac Millan p 205.
8 W H Sleeman, Report on the Depredation Committee by the Thugs (1840).
s Hiren Mukcrjee, India's Struggle for Freedom, Revised Efl&olh^&ll^p 40.
4 The History and Culture of Indian People Vol. IX Brithh Paramounfcy and Indian
Renaissance,{General Editor) Dr. R C Mazumdar, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay
p619. s Ibid. p 382.
6 SS Katare, Patterns of Dacoity in India, New Delhi, 1972, p 127.
7 Ibid., p 135.
8 Ibid., p 136.
9 Eric J Hobsbawm, Bandits, Penguin Books, 1972, p 17. 10 Ibid.,? 55. n JW,pl06.. i» 7W.,pl07. is Ibid., pi 30.