AMIT GUPTAX Anti-Imperialist Armed Struggle: An Assessment Any crystallisation of the socially exploitative processes seems to have resulted in the subjection of a people or peoples, and their surroundings, to the over-all control of the dominant categories of expropriators among them. Such categories' nominee/nominees consequently constituted the authority/authorities for ruling over the people, and the rule was usually unhindered till it was popularly believed to have turned into a misrule. Against the authority's/ authorities' misrule (which might be stark or camouflaged), and for righting a public wrong or wrongs (which might be located at the fringe, and on the surface, but having wider and deeper significance for some or many layers of society), the vast majority—under various degrees of exploitation—was reduced simply to a state of utter helplessness. Under monarchy/autocracy (the personal rule of a despot), which was irresponsible (in the sense that it was not responsible for its actions to the subjects at large) and unlimited (in the sense that it was not limited by restrictions under a constitution— the safety-valve for the subjects), the righting of a public wrong/wrongs had to take place through the use of counter-physical force against the physical force already monopolished by the authority, and imbibed in the state. (Since the subjects' use of such non-physical forces as the moral and the rationalising ones depended entirely on the authority's volunteering to take cognizance of them, they were not likely to be effective unless backed up by counter-physical force. In fact almost all the uses of counter-physical force appear to have occurred as the last expedients, proceeding the employment of rationalised persuasions, and a clear demonstration of the perceived rights and wrongs.) The application of counter-physical force was seen generally to have taken the shapes of a mutiny, an insurrection or a rising, and * Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi Social Scientist, Vol. 29, Nos. 11-12, Nov.-Dec. 2000