THE 'MODERN' IN MODERN INDIAN HISTORY criterion to a context of a nation-yet-to-be. Nor does it seem appropriate to equate the cases of anti-British resistance with anti-colonial struggles.5 The latter would have to be based on an awareness of the nature, workings and the implications of colonialism as a form of domination, control and exploitation. Even before such an awareness grew or was articulated in India, the British had encountered opposition of xenophobic or elemental kind or from contesting chiefs.6 Denying the externality of the British aggression as is done in some volumes of the New Cambridge History of India may occasion a profitable discussion of the social, economic, political and regional dynamics which made the British conquest possible;7 but that does not sponge out the myriad modes of British aggression under the auspices of the East India Company and the various acts of resistance of those who felt the brunt of that aggression. Concepts like 'primary resistance' and 'post-pacification revolt' help us to decode the complex situation to some extent;8 but they were essentially individual, and occasionally coalitional, efforts at self-preservation in the face of threat from a technologically superior, economically resilient and morally cynical practitioners of realpolitik. Some of them confronted the danger by borrowing the technological and economic tools of modernisation in war or diplomacy,9 while others trusted their elemental passion to defy it.10 They all went into the making of a saga of heroism and martyrdom. But its terrain was feudal and its agenda, restorative. It is significant that after the convulsions of 1857 and after Queen Victoria unwittingly parodied Asoka's post-Kalinga syndrome, there were no substantial attempts to eject the British out.11 One can put it down to the lingering fear psychosis which the reconquering British arms and angry reprisals unleashed, or to the political, military and attitudinal reorganisation of the British rule designed to prevent any recurrence of 1857.12 But what is more significant is that those who had resented and resisted the British aggressions now suddenly seemed to acquiesce and become subordinate partners in a newly ordered system of pararnountcy. Once assured of immunity from annexation, the 'native states' became willing satellites in the imperial system and play the courtier to the new Queen. The baubles and titles which their rulers periodically received seemed to have enough power to co-opt them into a system which they had dreaded not long ago.13 This transition from patriotism of self-preservation to subordinate partnership was as smooth as it was natural. But the colonial subjugation was a much more complex process