82 SOCIAL SCIENTIST 5 Niharranjan Ray, "The Medieval' Factor in Indian History", General Presidential Address, Patiala, 1967, pp 24-29; Ray, Nationalism in India, Aligarh Muslim University, AUgarh 1973, pp 28-33. ® Ray, Nationalism in India, p 32. 7 Niharranjan Ray, Bangalir Itihas, Adiparba (in Bengali), abridged edition, Lekhak Samabay Samity, Calcutta 1967, p 173. My translation. 8 Ibid., p 97. » Ibid.,pp 173-4. 19 B H Baden-Powell, cited in the "Memorandum by the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha,"Report of the Land Revenue Commission, Bengal, Vol 6, Bengal Government Press, Alipore 1941, p 24. i» Ibid., p 28. *2 See in this connection the discussion on the Indian Association's memoranda on the Bengal Tenancy Bill of 1885 in Asok Sen, Vidyasagar and His Elusive Milestones, Chapter on "The Economic Problem'5, CSSSC, Calcutta 1975 (forthcoming). 18 For an occupational break-up of early Congressmen, see Bimanbehari Majumdar and Bhakat Prasad Mazumdar, Congress and Congressmen in the Pre-Gandhian Era, 1885-1917, Firma K L Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta 1967, pp 18-19. *4 Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-1908, People's Publishing House, New Delhi 1973. 15 John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal, Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics, 1870-1940, Cambridge University Press, 1973; particularly Seal, "Imperialism and Nationalism in India55, pp 1-27. *6 The following observations on the national movement in Bengal are based on research currently being undertaken at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. 17 John Gallagher, in an essay concerning this period of Bengal's politics, suggests that it was the gradual democratization of various representative institutions after the First World War which gave "the enemies of privilege" the opportunity to wrest the control of local patronage "from the zamindars and their clients'* His explication of thebc rural movements runs on these lines: "When the malcontents of the neighbourhood aligned themselves with the provincial and national campaigns which arose from time to time, they hoped to exploit these issues for their own causes". His zeal to establish this argument leads him to overlook the latent dynamic, and gloss over the more obvious ones, which represented the potential strength of a national alliance based upon a programme for the solution of the agrarian question. The point I have tried to make above is that there exists ample evidence to show that the upper and middle peasantry leading these sustained local movements were conscious of their class ambitions and were led by the logic of united struggle to realize that these class ambitions were inseparably linked with the fate of the entire production economy in rural areas, a solution that was being objectively thwarted by the presence of imperialism. But then, there is probably little use making this point with these new interpreters of Indian history, since "ideology", they believe, "provides a good tool for fine carving, but it docs not make big buildings". See Gallagher, "Congress in Decline: Bengal 1930 to l939",in Gallagher, Johnson and Seal, op.cit., pp 269-325; also Seal's essay cited above. 18 The Statesman, 16 August 1928. ' 9 Letter from Harikumar Chakrabarty, Secretary BPCC, to Jawaharlal Nehru, President AICC, dated 15 March 1930, AICC Papers, File G-120/1930, Part II, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. 20 Arup Mallik and Partha Chattcrjee, "Bharatiya Ganatantra o Bourgeois Pratikria^ (in Bengali), Anya Artha, N08 (May 1975), pp 6-25. 2 l Gallagher, op.cit.