150 SOCIAL SCIENTIST political movement in which the participants were seeking to establish a political system after replacing the English. The rebels have often been accused of lacking a political vision, and the competence to establish an alternate political system. Roy' s detailed study of the localities in Bundelkhand aptly demonstrates how very wrong this view is, for the rebels almost everywhere established centres of administration along lines of the displaced British. Indeed, the meticulous details she provides on the rebels' centres of administration mark an important contribution to the history of the Revolt. They reflect the organised nature of the Revolt, and its ability to provide an adequate alternate political system. This perspective in which the Revolt appears as 'a fight for power', and in which the rebels emerge as 'attempting to capture nothing less than the apparatus of power', is informed by a frame of reference that views the Revolt from the perspective of the rebels. Though constrained by an exclusive reliance on colonial sources, Roy places the rebels at the centre of her study, and brings out the nature of emotions and beliefs, and strategies and calculations that influenced their initiative. Here, indeed, she makes an important departure from much of the existing work on the subject that either reproduces the information contained in the colonial sources, or situates it in the context of a chain of antecedent causes. In uncovering the voice of the rebels, as it were, and placing it at the centre-stage of the narrative, Roy, indeed, provides a fresh understanding on the Revolt. She is able to present the Revolt as an organised political movement, contrary to the much accepted view that sees it as a spontaneous and obscurantist outburst lacking organisation and planning, and a political vision. It is often believed that once the sepoy mutiny was over, the initiative and the leadership of the Revolt passed into the hands of the rulers of regional and local principalities. The petty Rajas and chiefs, it is said, enjoyed the complete allegiance of the soldiers, as well as the rural elites and the common people. Tapti Roy shows this to be untrue. Her evidence leads her to argue that these Rajas were actually forcibly drawn into the movement, and that their attitude towards the rebels was one of fear and disdain. Many of them, interestingly, remained in the good books of the English, even as they were supposedly providing leadership to the rebels. I found the section on Rani Lakshmi Bai particularly interesting. This celebrated queen of the Revolt, much glorified in nationalist writing, was in constant touch with the English asking them to help her against the rebels who had virtually made her a prisoner in