<p>The most important political development in the country between 1928 and 1940 was the widening of the gulf between the Congress and the Muslim League resulting in the emergence of the demand for partition as embod­ied in the famous Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League in March 1940. This dramatic change in Muslim politics was neither due to the ‘ever-present’ Hindu-Muslim antagonism nor was it an inevitable consequence of a separate Muslim nationalism. It was as the author argues the culmina­tion of a process that had begun in 1928 with the failure of the All Parties Convention to satisfy the moderate section of the Muslim League led by Jinnah. The present study traces the working of the process through various political developments including the Nehru Report Round Table Confer­ence the Communal Award and Provincial Autonomy. Based on an exhaustive examination of all available published and unpublished official records and private papers both in India and in the U.K. the book offers a penetrating and dispassionate analysis of the issues involved and attempts to answer some important questions that are relevant for an understanding of a crucial phase of our pre-partition history. What for instance led to the failure of the All Parties Convention? Why did the Congress-League coalition proposals fail? How to explain the strong Muslim reaction to the Congress ministries during 1937-9? What respon­sibility did the Congress itself bear for this? Were there any personality factors involved? And of course what was the British role in encouraging Muslim intransigence? About the Author Uma Kaura did her M.A. in History from University of Delhi in 1970 and Ph.D. from School of International Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1975. In 1973 she was deputed to the United Kingdom to consult the private papers and other official sources in India Office Library and British Museum.</p>

<p>In 1917 the Government of India, brought out a confidential publication entitled Political Trouble in India 1907-1917, written by J.C. Ker of the Indian Civil Service, Personal Assistant to the Director of Criminal Intelligence. The present book compiled twenty years after that by H.W. Hale of Indian Police is in a way its sequel when need was felt to review the course of the terrorist movement over the whole period. The volume sets out to give a connected account of seditious and revolutionary activity in India between the years 1917 and 1936. It was purely accidental that this book was published at a time when introduction of the new Constitution embodied in the Government of India Act 1935 and the assumption of the reins of the government in six Indian Provinces by the Congress party had caused a fundamental reorientation of political agitation as it was felt that a popularly elected government would mean the elimination of guns and bombs by the revolutionaries. The present narrative, it was felt at the time, would be of considerable value to those interested in the administration of Colonial India. The Appendices were meant to assist those, mainly police officers, whose duties required them to make a detailed study of the past history of terrorism.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Among the earliest works on the canons of Indian art the Citralak]sa]na of Nagnajit is presented here for the first time in an English translation. Written in Sanskrit probably in the Gupta period lost to Sanskritists for nearly a thousand years known to Tibetans from the medieval times and translated into German in the early years of the last century here is a work of great antiquity and significance. The work is to be carefully distinguished from the Citralak]sa]na chapter in the sixteenth century text of Sri Kumara’s Silparatna from which it is separated by close to a millennium. It is a text of considerable importance not only for the understanding of the early art of India but also for that of other countries in Asia including Tibet Mongolia and even China. In addition to dealing with Chitravidya and its origins it affords a fascinating glimpse into the minds of the theoreticians and artists of the past with its elaborate details of iconometry and its emphasis on the all-subduing figure of the Cakravartin the wheel-turning Master. The work as now published contains the English rendering of Citra­aksana based on Berthold Laufer’s German translation the complete Tibetan text (upon which the German translation was based) and also in their entirety Berthold Laufer’s learned introduction and annotations as translated from German. Berthold Laufer (1874-1934) was a celebrated German anthropologist and orientalist. About the Author B.N. Goswamy Professor Emeritus Panjab University Chandigarh is an art critic and art historian. He is best known for his scholarship on Pahari and Indian miniature paintings. He is the author of over twenty books on arts and culture. The Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan in 2008. He was also a visiting professor at the universities of California Pennsylvania and Heidelberg. Anna L. Dallapiccola is a former Professor of Indian Art History at the University of Heidelberg. Among her many publications are Sculpture at Vijayanagara: Iconography and Style with Anila Verghese; King Court and Capital: An Anthology of Kannada Literary Sources from the Vijayanagara Capital with C.T.M. Kotraiah and The Great Platform at Vijayanagara: Architecture &amp; Sculpture. All three volumes appeared in the Vijayanagara Research Project Monograph Series issued by Manohar.</p>

<p>Situated in northern South Asia at the interface between different linguistic and cultural areas, Nepal contains huge ethnic, cultural, and socio-political diversity. At the same time, it has had to confront far-reaching social change in an ex­tremely compressed timescale. This volume attempts to encompass these transformations and the resultant complexity through a series of in-depth case studies. Part 1 focuses on Pokhara, an important urban hub in west Nepal, and deals with urbanization, evolving ethnic relations, and occupational shifts. Part 2, ‘Marriage, Kinship, and Transformation of Intimacy’, covers questions of gender, social relations, marriage, drug use, and coping with the Maoist insurgency, in various parts of the country. In Part 3, ‘Transnational Links’, different chapters cover Gurkha soldiers, tourist developments, migrant workers, and ethnic movements. Part 4 consists of one substantial chapter, 'Nepal as Viewed from the Indian Himalayas’, in which Gerald Berreman makes a series of direct comparisons between the Indian and Nepalese Himalayas. This is first of the two volumes entitled Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia. The volumes bring together scholars from Japan, Nepal, India, Europe, and America in order to deepen our understanding of social change in the region, on the basis of fresh fieldwork reports and new analyses.</p>

<p>The role of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in demanding the separation of the Hindu majority districts in the western half of Bengal from the proposed East Pakistan has not been studied so far and documented. The ‘Right’ historians today try to view it as a great triumph for the Hindus while ‘Secular’ ones try to paint Syama Prasad as an ‘arch communalist’. Underlying both versions of the story is an assumption that the partition of Bengal was a much sought after goal pursued by Syama Prasad. Yet an impassioned examination of the actual documents show that Syama Prasad tried to work out a formula for the co-existence of the Hindus and the Muslims till the very last. Only when all attempts including that of Mahatma Gandhi in the dark days of the Noakhali riots failed to dissuade the Muslim League from trying to push the subcontinent towards partition that Syama Prasad launched his drive for the separation of the western districts of Bengal from East Pakistan. Partition was the bane of the Hindu Mahasabha. They had called a hartal on 3 July 1947 to register their disapproval of the idea. But once partition gained acceptance at all levels beginning from the Congress to the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten Syama Prasad saw no alternative to making the best of a bad bargain and pushed for partition. The bloodbath of 16 August 1946 in Calcutta and the reprehensible violation of Hindu women in Noakhali the following October cast the die. He took a leaf out of Master Tara Singh's plans in the Punjab for the regrouping of the provinces by isolating the non-Muslim population from the Muslim majority zones. The Congress Working Committee took the same line passing a resolution on 8 March 1947 in favour of the isolation of the non-Muslim areas in the Punjab from the predominantly Muslim ones. This strengthened Syama Prasad’s case for the partition of Bengal. But this was a last resort measure failing all other options. Both the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha and Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee were aware of the grave consequences of the measure for the province as this much awaited volume notes and were pledged to bring back the areas that were lost to Pakistan. About the Author Chhanda Chatterjee retired as Professor of History and Director Centre for Guru Nanak Dev Studies in Visva-Bharati Santiniketan. Currently she is the nominee of the President of India in the two central universities of Manipur and Tripura.</p>

<p>This volume is part of the collaborative Project of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK) on the documents pertaining to economic history and quality of life in Northern India in the late nineteenth century. The present volume (divided into three parts A B and C) roughly covers the broad period of the 1860s and 1870s. It dwells on documents collected from a wide spectrum of human activity in northern India. They included materials from diverse fields such as agriculture forestry population public health education sanitation and different aspects of the quality of life in each of which the British Raj was collecting information and directing courses of development in more than one sense. By northern India is meant here what was generally known as the North-Western Provinces (NWP) and the province of Oudh (till 1877 after which it was merged with the NWP) in the late nineteenth century excluding the Punjab Of the many documents included in the volume five major issues may be identified: (a) various issues relating to a high land revenue demand and its economic impact (b) education and a few other social issues (c) public health and mortality (d) environmental issues and (e) questions connected with quality of life. Touching on a number of crucial aspects of material conditions and quality of life of people in northern India in the late nineteenth century the volume stands as a valuable source book for the students of economic history and human development in general. About the Author Amiya Kumar Bagchi is currently Emeritus Professor of Economics Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK) and first Chancellor of Tripura Central University. Arun Bandopadhyay is currently Historical and Archaeological Secretary of the Asiatic Society Kolkata and formerly Nurul Hasan Professor of History and Dean of Arts at the University of Calcutta.</p>

<p>This is arguably the first systematic study of the revenue system in Post-Maurya and Gupta times. The author shows that some new principles of taxation were enunciated during the period under review. In earlier times the king was entitled to taxes in lieu of protection afforded to the people, but in the Gupta period royal ownership came to be considered as basis of taxation. The volume discusses the earliest epigraphic evidence regard­ing fiscal concessions granted to priests and temples. While explaining various taxes mentioned in land charters, the volume shows that fines and forced labour constituted important sources of revenue. Throughout this study note has been taken of regional variations in the interpretation of fiscal terms. Adequate attention has also been paid to the nature of emergency taxation and the machinery of revenue administration. The present edition includes a Foreword and an Afterword by Vishwa Mohan Jha which throws new light on this classic work.</p>

<p>This volume first published in 1882 presents a clear and authoritative exposition of the fundamental principles upon which the Taluqdari system of Awadh was based. The principal object has been to narrate the history in the very words succinct or otherwise of the various colonial figures and administrators who were the authors of the settlement. The material used by the author has been mostly taken from Parliamentary Blue Books Official Reports and Returns and other State Papers. This book is indispensable for scholars of colonial South Asia especially the United Provinces the Indian Mutiny and Land and Revenue Systems in the kingdom of Awadh. About the Author Rajkumar Sarvadhikari B.L. was law lecturer at Canning College Lucknow.</p>

<p>This collection contains ten articles, the first four of them dealing with the antiquity of distillation process in India which is central to the manufacture of alcohol. Written from different points of view they reflect the lack of unanimity among scholars and throw light on an important aspect of technology. The remaining six articles discuss the evidence of alcohol use in ancient India. Drawing on textual evidence from religious and secular literature, they unravel the lesser-known aspects of life of ancient Indians and amply demonstrate how alcohol consumption influenced religion and art. They emphasize that neither the ancient Indians nor their gods and goddesses were abstemious teetotalers: evidence is plentiful to indicate that they were more bon vivant than we can imagine or give them credit for.</p>

<p>A classic volume this Dictionary of British-Indian Dates provides a fascinating picture of colonial rule in India upto 1860. The volume has entries sections and sub-sections on all important British and Indian personalities of that age the princes the colonial administrators warlords scholars traders and fortune hunters. Along with it all legal and political acts are discussed as are the necessary battles and treaties. All the towns and regions of South Asia large and small mofussil and urban are also taken note of in exemplary detail. The volume is indispensable for scholars of South Asian Colonial History.</p>