¹ Broomfield, John H., Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal (Berkeley, 1968)Google Scholar; Sen, Shila, Muslim Politics in Bengal (New Delhi, 1976).Google Scholar

² Broomfield, , Elite Conflict, pp. 284–95.Google Scholar

³ For a discussion of these riots, see Sarkar, Sumit, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908 (New Delhi, 1973), pp. 444–64Google Scholar; also, Ray, Rajat, ‘Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875–1908’ (unpublished Camb. Ph.D. thesis 1973), p. 274.Google Scholar

⁴ Not only the communalist Hindu Mahasabha, but also a majority of the Congress leaders saw no hope of reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims, and Hindu legislators voted overwhelmingly in favour of partition. A major exception was Sarat Chandra Bose who together with the Muslim leaders H. S. Suhrawardy and Abul Hashem tried till the last to secure a united Bengal.

⁵ In the riots in the rural areas of Dacca in 1941, 81 villages were cleared of all Hindus in a matter of five days. 2519 households (joint families) including 15,724 persons were affected by looting or arson. See, Report of the Dacca Riots Enquiry Committee, Government of Bengal (Alipur, 1942), p. 33.Google Scholar

⁶ For accounts of the Deccan riots, see Catanach, I. J., Rural Credit in Western India (Oxford, 1970), Ch. IGoogle Scholar; Catanach, I. J., ‘Agrarian Disturbances in Nineteenth Century India’ in Indian Economic and Social History Review (hereafter referred to as IESHR), III, 1 (03 1966)Google Scholar; Kumar, Ravinder, ‘The Deccan Riots of 1875’, Journal of Asian Studies, VI (08 1965), pp. 613–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ 6300 sq. miles in area with a population in 1911 of 4,526,422, Sachse, F. A., Mymensingh District Gazetteer, 1917Google Scholar (hereafter referred to as M.D.G.)

Census of India, Bengal, Tables, 1901, 1911, 1921, 1931

⁹ M.D.G., pp. 61–2.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Sengupta, K. K., ‘Agrarian Disturbances in Nineteenth Century Bengal’, IESHR, VIII, 1 (03 1971), pp. 192–212.Google Scholar For the agitation in Mymensingh, see pp. 195–7, 203–4.

¹¹ The Tenancy Act was the government's response to the wave of agrarian agitation that swept east Bengal in the 1870s and the early 1880s. It marked the end of the period of high landlordism in Bengal. According to the Act, a right of occupancy would accrue to a tenant who had cultivated any plot of land in a village for the previous 12 years and rent could be enhanced only once in 15 years on clearly defined conditions and by not more than 12.5 per cent of the existing rent.

¹² M.D.G., p. 64.Google Scholar

¹³ Annual Reports on the Wards' and Attached Estates, cited Ray, Rajat, ‘Social Conflict’, pp. 113–15.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Sachse, F. A., Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Mymensingh, 1908–1919 (hereafter referred to as M.S.R.), pp. 43–5.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 25.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 44.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 45.

¹⁸ M.D.G., p. 86.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The jotedar thesis gets its most rigorous formulation in Rajat, and Ray, Ratna, ‘Zamindars and Jotedars: A Study of Rural Politics in Bengal’, in Modern Asian Studies, 9, 1 (02 1975), pp. 81–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also, Sen, Sunil, Agrarian Struggle in Bengal (Calcutta, 1972)Google Scholar, Ch. I, and Ray, Ratna, Change in Bengali Agrarian Society (New Delhi, 1979), Epilogue.Google Scholar

²⁰ Jack, J. C., Economic Life of a Bengal District (London, 1916), p. 81.Google Scholar The word ‘jote’ simply means cultivation or tillage and the majority of the ‘jotedars’ of east Bengal may best be described as peasant smallholders. ‘Jotedars’ in the sense of ‘de facto village landlords’ were to be found in certain peripheral regions rather than in the old settled tracts of Bengal.

²¹ By ‘agricultural families’ the Settlement Officer meant ryot families. The legal category of ‘ryots’ would include not only peasants but also de facto rent receivers who had their lands cultivated by under-raiyats and sharecroppers. It should be noted that the figures give in the table are the result of a very rough and ready calculation from settlement records and cess records. According to the Mymensingh cess returns 14,000 cess ryots paid cess on a rent of more than Rs 22 and could therefore be taken as holding more than 10 acres; but Sachse decided to include cess-tenureholders in his category of agricultural families and assumed that 30,000 families owned on an average 12 acres. The table therefore does not quite present a picture of stratification within the peasantry. It is only used in the absence of better statistics for Mymensingh. M.S.R., P. 25.Google Scholar

²² At a much later period, viz. the 1960s, Bertocci discovered an inter-generational circulation of economic and social status among households of different landowning classes, cited Bertocci, Peter J., ‘Structural Fragmentation and Peasant Classes in Bangladesh’, Journal of Social Studies, 5 (10 1979), p. 56.Google Scholar Abu Abdullah writing on the agrarian structure in Bangladesh in the mid-1970s accepted Shanin's point about ‘the barriers to polarization set up by the internal structure of peasant society’ with a caution that over emphasis on this aspect could lead one to underestimate ‘emergent’ class conflicts and change processes in rural society, Abdullah, Abu et al. , ‘Agrarian Structure and the IRDP Preliminary considerations’, in Bangladesh Development Studies, IV, 2 (04 1976), p. 217.Google Scholar The question of individual mobility of peasant households in the first half of the twentieth century is more difficult to fathom, but can at least be partially probed by studying the pattern of land alienation from registration records in conjunction with settlement records of selected villages.

²³ See Prices Enquiry Committee Report (1914) and the Bengal Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee Report (1929) (hereafter referred to as BPBECR), cited Chaudhuri, B. B., ‘The Process of Depeasantization in Bengal and Bihar 1885–1947’, in Indian Historical Review, 2, 1 (1975), PP. 115–16.Google Scholar

²⁴ M.D.G., p. 64.Google Scholar As B. B. Chaudhuri has pointed out, the volume of rent burden of peasants in their impoverishment has often been exaggerated. The size of rural indebtedness was estimated by the Bengal Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee in 1930 to be Rs 100 crores, while the ‘gross rental’ was estimated by the Land Revenue Commission in 1940 to be only Rs 11.32 crores, Chaudhuri, , ‘Process of Depeasantiza-tion’, p. 108 fn.Google Scholar

²⁵ M.S.R., pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

²⁶ Census of India, 1921, Vol. V, Bengal, Pt I, pp. 132–3.Google Scholar See also a fascinating folk poem by an immigrant to Nowgong, Assam from eastern Mymensingh, MdHamid, Abdul, Pater Kabita (Juriya, Assam, 1930).Google Scholar

²⁷ M.S.R., p. 29.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., p. 27.

²⁹ For the movements in the price of raw jute, see Season and Crop Reports of Bengal.

³⁰ Ibid.; and Chaudhuri, , ‘Process of Depeasantization’, pp. 117–18.Google Scholar

³¹ Capital, 15 08 1929, cited, BPBECR Vol. I, p. 65.Google Scholar

³² Balo bbai, nailyar shaman kirshi nai.

Nailya bepari, satkhanda bari,

Joanshaiya thuni diya banchhe choari.

(Say brother, there is no crop like Nalia.…)

From the memory of Mr Charu C. Chowdhuri.

³³ One poem describes a meeting of all the various crops and plants other than the arriviste jute with paddy presiding:

Dhanya bale duiti katha shuno mor kachhe

Tomader katha shuni aphshos hoiachhe

Chharilo tomader hoilo durgati

Rangoon deshete jano amar bashati

Gariber lagia ami eshechhi sada

Kinia khailo dekho oishab gadha

Nalita dekho kata jalan karilo

Amay hela kore chhariat dilo

Tomra amake dekho karilet raja

Hoitechhe krishaker kato jeno shaja.…

Abdul Samed Mian, Krishak Boka (Ahara, Mymensingh, 1921).

³⁴ Beshi pata karo bhai re beshi takar ashe

Jemon asha temon dasha dena pater chashe

Taka taka majur diya niran kulan kam

Marwarira ghare boshe panch taka dey dam

Again

Eto pat dili keno tui chasha

Ebar pater chashe desh dubali, ore buddhinasha

Bujhli na tui burar beta, Abeder katha noyko jhuta

Khete hobe pater gora thik janish mor bhasha

Mone korechho nibo taka,

She asha tor jabe phanka,

Panchiser poya hobe tor, hrine porbi thasha

Nibi bote taka ghare,

Peter daye jabe phure

Hisheb kore dekhish khata, jato kharacher pasha.

Abed Ali Mian, Desh Shanti (Gantipara, Rangpur, 1925).

³⁵ SDO Kishoreganj to Collector Mymensingh in Report on Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Bengal 1926, GB (Calcutta, 1928).Google Scholar

³⁶ Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, Private Investment in India 1900–1939 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 266, 268–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ Royal Commission on Agriculture in India 1926–28 Appendix Vol. 14, p. 70Google Scholar; ‘Note on Marketing of Agricultural Produce’ by Mitra, J. M., Registrar of Cooperative Societies Bengal in Evidence RCA Vol. 4, pp. 137–8Google Scholar; BPBECR Vol. I, pp. 104–5Google Scholar; Bagchi, , Private Investment, pp. 264–5.Google Scholar

³⁸ Evidence of Finlow, R. S. and Mclean, K., Director and Asst. Director of Agriculture Bengal in Evidence RCA Vol. 4, p. 13.Google Scholar

³⁹ Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 286.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Dt. Agrl. Offcr. Mymensingh to Collr. Mymensingh in Rep. on Marketing of Agrl. Produce in Bengal 1926.

⁴¹ M.S.R., p. 27.Google Scholar

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ The classic exposition of the ‘semi-feudalism’ argument for Bengal is Amit Bhaduri, ‘A Study in Agricultural Backwardness under Semi-feudalism’, in Economic Journal, 82 (1973), pp. 120–37Google Scholar; see also Rajat, and Ray, Ratna, ‘The Dynamics of Continuity in Rural Bengal under the British Imperium’, in IESHR, X, 2 (1973), pp. 111 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ The ‘depeasantization’ thesis is best expounded in Chaudhuri, ‘Process of Depeasantization’.

⁴⁵ M.S.R., p. 27.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ M.D.G., p. 69.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Clayton Cmsr Dacca Dn to Hopkyns Ch Secy Bengal, 20 May 1930, GP Poll Con File 435(I)/30 (WBSA).

⁴⁸ Hopkyns CS to Burrows DM Mymensingh, 28 June 1930, GB Poll Con File 511/30 (WBSA).

⁴⁹ Dutt DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 17 May 1930, GB Poll Con File 435(2–19)/30 (WBSA).

⁵⁰ Burrows DM Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn, 22 June 1930, GB Poll Con File 511/30 (WBSA).

⁵¹ Dutt DM Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dan, 2 June 1930; Hopkyns CS to Burrows DM Mym., 18 June 1930, GB Poll Con File 511/30 (WBSA).

⁵² Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA). Tanika Sarkar is obviously in error when she writes about ‘a serious crop failure almost amounting to a famine situation’ in Mymensingh. Sarkar, Tanika, ‘The First Phase of Civil Disobedience in Bengal, 1930–31’, in Indian Historical Review, IV, 1 (07 1977), pp. 93–4.Google Scholar There was a good harvest in 1930 but what did happen was the price equivalent of a famine situation.

⁵³ Report on The Land Revenue Administration in Bengal, 1930–1931, p. 5.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ibid.; Amrila Bazar Patrika (hereafter referred to as ABP), 30 July 1930.

⁵⁵ ABP, 16 July 1930.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Teleg. from Secy Mukhtears Bar Kishoreganj to GB, 12 July 1930; Ghatak ADM Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn, 13 July 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930; GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 15 and 16 July 1930.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Teleg. from Secy Mukhtears Bar Kish. to GB, 12 July 1930; Ghatak ADM Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn, 13 July 1930; Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, 14 July 1930; Report about the looting and rioting in Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish. dtd 12 July 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930; GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 15, 16 and 30 July 1930; Lakshmikanta Kirtaniya, Loter Gan (Songs Commemorating The Loot, Matkhola, Mymensingh 1930).

⁵⁸ Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 28 July 1930; GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 30 July 1930.

⁵⁹ Telēg. from ADM Mym. to GB, 13 July 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 16 July 1930.

⁶⁰ ABP, 16 July 1930.

⁶¹ Ghatak ADM Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn, 13 July 1930; Rep. about the looting and rioting in Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish. dtd 13 July 1930; Teleg. from ADM Mym. to GB, 14 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁶² Rep. about the looting and rioting in Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish dtd 14 July 1930; Inspr Kish. to ASP II Mym., 14 July 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 30 July 1930; Lakshmikanta Kirtaniya, Loter Gan.

The Matkhola Kali temple provides an interesting example of the syncretist tradition in rural Bengal. Muslims would vow to sacrifice goats or sheep before the deity for the fulfilment of their wishes and at the time of Durga or Kali Puja a number of goats or sheep would be brought by Muslims to be sacrificed. The only difference between the Hindu and Muslim offerings was that whereas the Hindus would take away the carcass leaving only the head for the Goddess, the Muslims would leave also the carcass because they would not touch the meat of any animal which had not been slaughtered in the orthodox way by cutting open the windpipe. The Hindu method was to sever the head with one stroke of the sabre and failure to do so would portend great calamity. The Matkhola temple was not touched during the 1930 riots, although the bazar attached to it was looted and partly burnt. But it was demolished and the image broken by Pakistani troops during the Bangladesh war of 1971 and the broken image was later immersed in the Ganges at Benares.

I am indebted for this information to Mr Charu C. Chowdhuri, one of whose ancestors had established the Matkhola Kali temple.

⁶³ Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, 16 July 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 30 July 1930.

⁶⁴ Teleg. from ADM Mym. to GB, 16 July 1930; Teleg. from SP Mym. to Police, Bengal, 16 July 1930; Rep. on the Police Firing at Silashi on 15·7·30 by SDO Sadar South; Rep. on Disturbances at Gaffargaon in Mymensingh by Mackenzie, SP Mym., GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 17 July 1930.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, 16 July 1930; Rep. about the looting and rioting in Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish. dtd. 14 July 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁶⁶ In the 1906–07 riots in Mymensingh also the rioters had believed that the government had authorized the pillage of Hindu mahajans, cf. M.S.R., p. 30Google Scholar; very similar notions appear to have been held by peasant rebels during the Deccan riots of 1875, cf. Catanach, , ‘Agrarian Disturbances’, pp. 70–2Google Scholar, and in the grain riots in Madras in 1918, cf. Arnold, David, ‘Looting, Grain Riots and Government Policy in South India 1918’, in Past and Present, 84, (1979), p. 145CrossRefGoogle Scholar; analogies can also be drawn in this respect with peasant behaviour in rural riots in eighteenth-century France and Russia. See, for instance, Rudé, George, The Crowd in History (New York, 1964), p. 28.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ghatak ADM Mym. to Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn, 13 July 1930; Teleg. from ADM Mym. to GB, 14 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁶⁸ Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, 14 July 1930; Teleg from DM Mym. to GB, 16 July 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁶⁹ Clayton Cmsr Dac, Dn to Hopkyns CS, 31 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁷⁰ Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁷¹ Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, 16 July 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930; GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA); ABP, 30 July 1930.Google Scholar

⁷² Mackenzie SP Mym. to Burrows DM Mym., 2 August 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁷³ Special Report Case No. 93/30 Report III by Khaleque ASP Mym., 30 August 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁷⁴ Clayton Cmsr Dac. Dn to Hopkyns CS, 31 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ GB Poll Con File 444/30 (WBSA). Apart from the testimony of the victims, there is a mass of evidence furnished by eye-witnesses, e.g., the evidence of Miss R. B. Verulkar, Principal, Eden High School and College for Girls, Dacca, and of Miss P. Haldar, Headmistress in charge of Vernacular Training Schools.

⁷⁷ The official enquiry committee report, meant to be a whitewashing document, acknowledged that raids were carried out on Hindu houses but put forward a rather curious justification of the apparent partiality to the Muslims. In the Committee's opinion having recognized ‘the insufficiency of their resources to deal with the Muhammadan mobs, who were far more numerous and far more dangerous than the Hindu mobs’, the police did their duty by taking ‘every precaution in their power to put an end to the chance of any further provocation from the Hindu side’. Dacca Riot Enquiry Committee Report 1930 (hereafter referred to as DRECR 1930), p. 36.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Ibid., p. 19.

⁷⁹ Ibid., pp. 19, 25.

⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 38. The report maintained, however, that local officials did nothing wrong in striking an alliance with the Nawab of Dacca.

⁸¹ Craig DIG Dac. Range asked Lowman IGP whether there was any hope of Dutt being replaced, GB Poll Con File 511/30; Clayton complained that the police would have done a better job if Dutt had given proper support and considered that ‘a better selection might have been made for Mymensingh’, Clayton Cmsr Dae. Dn to Hopkyns CS, 25 May 1930, GB Poll Con File 435/30 (WBSA).

⁸² Dutt DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 2 June 1930; Hopkyns CS to Burrows DM Mym., 18 June 1930, GB Poll Con File 511/30 (WBSA).

⁸³ Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 1 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 511/30 (WBSA).

⁸⁴ Ibid.

⁸⁵ Ibid.

⁸⁶ Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁸⁷ ABP, 1 August 1930Google Scholar; Liberty, 25 July 1930.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ For instance, the government-appointed committee explained the origin of the Dacca riots in this way: the Hindus to further the civil disobedience campaign had attempted ‘to divide the Muhammadans and thus weaken the influence of their natural leaders’; when the several associations of the Muhammadans succeeded in coming together again and felt themselves under one leader, the Nawab of Dacca, ‘they were naturally elated and anxious to take the first opportunity of showing the Congress party that their intrigues had failed’, DRECR 1930, p. 25.

⁸⁹ Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS. 18 July 1930. GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁹⁰ ABP, 17 July 1930.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Statement by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, ABP, 1 August 1930.Google Scholar

⁹² Ibid.; Statement by Sabha, B. P.Hindu, Advance, 2 August 1930Google Scholar and ABP 24 July 1930Google Scholar; Memorial to H. E. the Governor of Bengal from the Hindu population of Kish., GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁹³ Burrows DM Mym. to Press Officer GB 5 August 1930; GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁹⁴ Rep. about the looting and rioting in Kish. Sdn by SDO Kish. dtd 12 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁹⁵ Special Report Case No. 93/30 Report III by Khaleque ASP Mym., 30 August 1930, GB Pol Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁹⁶ Notes on Kishoreganj Investigations by Mackenzie SP Mym., 24 Aug. 1930, GB Pol Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

⁹⁷ Statement by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, ABP 1 August 1930.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ During food riots in eighteenth-century England, it was not unusual for starving people to scatter grain along roads and hedges or to dump it in the river. Their main purpose was to punish proprietors for violating their notions of justice, cf. Thompson, E. P., ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, in Past and Present, 50 (02 1971), pp. 114–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹⁹ The problem of loan refusals was to become more acute in subsequent years. It was reported from Noakhali in May 1931 that ‘the unwillingness of Hindu moneylenders to give loans may give rise to riots like those in Kishoreganj. There have been threats.… the Mahommedans had boycotted Hindu moneylenders and threatened that unless they gave loans freely neither their lives nor their property would be safe.’ Cmser, Chittagong Dn to CS, 28 May 1931, GB Poll Con File 105/31 (1–14) (WBSA).

¹⁰⁰ Teleg. from DM Mym. to GB, 23 Sep. 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Reid CS, 25 September 1930; Burrows DM Mym. to Secy Revenue Dept.,13 October 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

¹⁰¹ GB Poll Con File 35/31 (WBSA).

¹⁰² Record of Rights of Mouza Jangalia, District Settlement Records (Mym. Collectorate Record Room).

¹⁰³ Deeds of Land Sales and Mortgage, Registration Records (Mym. Dt, Registration Office).

¹⁰⁴ Ibid.

¹⁰⁵ The voting behaviour of the Punjab peasantry on the eve of partition has, for instance, been recently explained in these terms, ef. Talbot, I. A., ‘The 1946 Punjab Elections’, Modem Asian Studies, 14, 1 (02 1980), p. 90 and passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Satish Chandra Roy Chaudhuri MLC Manager of Atharabari Zamindari to Hopkyns CS, 17 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (WBSA).

¹⁰⁷ Ahmad, Abul Mansur, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhar (Dacca, 1968), pp. 5–6, 12–13.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Chaudhuri, Nirad C., An Autobiography of An Unknown Indian (London, 1951), p. 230.Google Scholar The author described four distinct aspects in the Hindu bhadralok's attitude to Muslims: retrospective hostility for their one-time domination, utter indifference on the plane of thought to Muslims as an element in contemporary society, friendliness for the Muslims of their own economic and social status and mixed concern and contempt for the Muslim peasant.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid.

¹¹⁰ Ahmad, , Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhar, pp. 1, 4–5.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ Chaudhuri, , Autobiography, p. 232.Google Scholar

¹¹² The peasants of Dewanganj who were deeply in debt took advantage of a rumour that the government had authorized the pillage of Hindus to loot bazaars and attack Hindu mahajans, M.S.R., p. 30.Google Scholar

¹¹³ Burrows DM Mym. to Hopkyns CS, 18 July 1930, GB Poll Con File 613/30 (VVBSA).

¹¹⁴ Fortnightly Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal for the first half of January 1932, first half of March 1932, second half of March 1932 and second half of July 1935.

¹¹⁵ Kindersley DM Mym. to jt. Secy CCRI Dept., 27 November 1937, GB Rev. B May 1940 Progs 14–57 (BSRR).

¹¹⁶ The phrases in quotes are those of Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx, K. and Engels, P., Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow, 1962), p. 334.Google Scholar