Articles by Suranjan Das

The Left Front has made tremendous strides in retaining its support base and in fact recapturing some. But now it needs to steer a careful course, for instance, balancing industrial growth and harmonious industrial relations and focusing on such issues as gender justice, health, welfare and quality of life issues.

Towards a Reconstruction of the Calcutta Underworld through Police Records Suranjan Das Research on the history of British and American crime has shown that at particular historical junctures, crime can be a prologue to conscious and articulate resistance by the dispossessed. Some hitherto unutilised Bengal Police files on 'goondas' in Calcutta are examined from this point of view. These are found to be valuable sources for the historical study of the operation of the police and the legal structure in the colonial period and after.

Bengal 1928-1934: The Politics of Protest by Tanika Sarkar; OUP, Delhi,
TANIKA SARKAR's Bengal 1928-1934: The Politics of Protest has made a pioneering contribution to modern Indian historiography in more than one respect. It has attained a significant breakthrough in historical methodology by integrating the chronology with the theme; it has enriched our understanding of twentieth century Bengal by projecting linkages between various strands of protest politics which have been traditionally treated in isolation. Although Sarkar sets out to follow a 'strictly chronological framework' (p 3), in actual practice she has successfully highlighted within a particular time-span the main themes of the 'politics of protest in Bengal. The starting and terminating points of Sarkar's work are significant: the former marks the renewal of agitational politics which ended the period of lull caused by the withdrawal of the Non-cooperation Movement; the latter signifies the collapse of the Civil Disobedience and revolutionary terrorism, and hence, the close of an eventful chapter in India's struggle for freedom. As is inevitable for such studies, the official discourse forms the major source material for the present work. But the information from official records hasbeen also corroborated by such non-official sources as newspapers, private papers, contemporary memoirs, the rich collection of proscribed Bengali literature at the India Office Library and the oral testimonies of those who have lived through the fateful years. What has resulted is a balanced and ordered presentation.