Editorial Note READERS WILL NOTICE that with effect from the current number of Social Scientist the editorial team of the journal has been expanded. Such an expansion has been long overdue. The tiny editorial board with which the journal has been functioning until now has been extremely hard-pressed. Its familiarity with research work going on at the various centres of the country has, of necessity, been somewhat limited; this fact, coupled with the hand-to-mouth existence in terms of contributions which the journal has led until now, has meant that a disproportionately large share of articles has come from the immediate environs of the editorial team. As a result, while the journal has acquired a large national readership, its catchment area for articles has remained rather norrowly circumscribed. While this might have sufficed in a priod of transition, when the main objective was to ensure somehow that the journal appeared every month, the very success in stabilising its fortunes now requires that it should rise to its role as an all-India journal, drawing in contributors from all over the country and publisting quality articles on a wider range of topics. The editorial team has been expanded with this end in view. Even though the loss of Kitty Menon to the editorial board on account other other preoccupations would be a serious blow, the new team, consisting of illustrious academics as well as active young scholars in different disciplines and drawn from different regions in the country should enable Social Scientist to realise its objective of becoming a high-quality journal of theoretical research. The current number of Social Scientist has a somewhat unusual form: it consists exclusively of three lengthy review ar.ticles each of which discusses a recently-published work on Indian history. Our objective is not only to give the readers a flavour of some recent historical research on "modern" India, but also to introduce them to the historic" graphical perspectives within which such research is conducted, and the controversies surrounding these perspectives. An important tendency in modern Indian historiography is the one which is rejected in the volumes entitled Subalturn Studies that Ranajit Guha has been editing. This tendency does not just call for, and undertake, a more extensive study of the struggles of subaltern classes; its aim is not a mere widening of the boundaries of historical research to include within its perimeter the hitherto neglected but real heroes of history. It insists that these struggles be studied in a particular way, that there is scope for an