Author: Mridula Mukherjee
Publisher: Sage Publications
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 560
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0761996869
Description
At a time when a majority of scholars engage in studies on class, religion, ethnicity and gender, this study forcefully demonstrates that peasants as a category and their problems continue to excite considerable academic debate.
Divided into two parts, the book first reconstructs the political world of the peasants of Punjab and forms the empirical base on which rests the subsequent theoretical and methodological discussion. It captures their struggles at the national level as well as their everyday struggles on purely class or peasant issues.
The second part makes important interventions in the theoretical debates regarding the role of peasants in revolutionary transformation in the modern world. The author argues that the automatic association of revolution with large-scale violence has resulted in the refusal to recognize the non-violent yet revolutionary political practice of peasants in the Indian National Movement. The author subjects to critical scrutiny a wide range of theoretical models and argues that the political practice of the Indian peasants cannot be fit into any theoretical straightjacket.
Contents
SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
I POLITICAL PRACTICE IN RURAL PUNJAB: THE HEROIC AND THE EVERYDAY: Peasant Protest: The Historical Context
Emergence of Modern Peasant Organizations and Fashioning a Peasant Agenda, 1924-29 Marching with the Nation: Peasants and Civil Disobedience, 1930-32
Consolidating Peasant Politics: National Organization and Ideological Radicalization, 1933-37
Peasant Upsurge: Reaching the High-Water Mark, 1938-39
Anti-War, People’s War and Post-War: Communists and Peasants, 1939-47
Peasant Protest in a Non-Hegemonic State: The Princely State of Patiala, 1930-53
II INTERROGATING PEASANT HISTORIOGRAPHY: PEASANT PERSPECTIVES, MARXIST PRACTICE AND SUBALTERN THEORY: Peasants and Anti-Colonial Nationalism
Peasants and Non-Violence: Forms of Protest and Methods of Mobilization Peasants and Outsiders: Social Origins of Leaders and Participants
Mapping Peasant Consciousness: Elements of an Alternative Framework
In Conclusion: Transforming Peasant Consciousness-Practice versus Theory
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX