94 SOCIAL SCIENTIST All of which brings us to the vexed question of 'hegemony9. Bhattacharya^ study that it is a concept that must be applied with extreme caution to the context of the Raj. It draws our attention to the often-ignored fact that politically-minded Indians, far from being credulous consumers of state propaganda, often had a sophisticated understanding of how the Raj's propaganda machine operated and were quite adept at exploiting opportunities it offered to further purposes which had little to do with the interests of the state. The way in which communist activists on the ground pushed forward what they regarded as their party's agendas (often disregarding directives from on high) under the guise of furthering the 'war effort5 is only the most obvious example. Equally revealing is the picture Bhattacharya presents of activists only tenuously associated with the official outlawed Congress exploiting the ambiguity of their position to organise highly flexible, ideologically eclectic, locally oriented and opportunistic campaigns during the 'Quit India5 movement. This underlines the fact that ideological hegemony and political control were will-o-wisps which both the colonial state and Indian political parties pursued, but which always remained beyond their grasp. All of these arguments are backed up by impressively thorough research and refer to a very wide base of secondary reading. The one subject which might usefully have been included is account of colonial British propaganda and information policy in the decades preceding the war, so that the reader could assess the extent to which wartime measures were indeed something new, a point that Bhattacharya makes but does not pursue. But quibbles aside, this is a work of sophistication and maturity, which reflects thoughtfully and sensibly on a theme too often reduced to superficial, abstract generalities about 'colonial knowledge5 and 'hegemony5. Joya Chatterji London School of Economics, London