Based on papers written for seminar on ‘decolonization’ and ‘contemporary history’ of the Punjab organized by the Institute of Punjab Studies which aims at promoting interdisciplinary study of the political economic social and cultural life of the peoples of the northwest of India this book should be of great interest to administrators politicians and journalists as well as to social scientists and general readers. It gives useful insights into administration politics violence demographic change and the condition of the relatively unprivileged ‘fragments’ of the society in the region – women dalits labourers and village communities. About the Author J.S. Grewal Formerly Professor and ViceChancellor Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar and Director and later Chairman Indian Institute of Advanced Study Shimla has published extensively on the historiography of medieval India and the Sikh and Punjab history. Some of his books by Manohar are Sikh Ideology Polity and Social Order (2007) Recent Debates in Sikh Studies: An Assessment (2011) Historical Writings on the Sikhs: Western Enterprise and Indian Response (2012) and Guru Nanak: A New Path and a New Panth (forthcoming). His other recent publications include Master Tara Singh in Indian History (OUP 2017) and Guru Gobind Singh: Master of the White Hawk (OUP 2019). Indu Banga Professor Emerita in History Panjab University Chandigarh and formerly Professor of History Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar has authored/edited nearly 20 books on agrarian urban institutional social and cultural history of medieval and modern India and the Punjab. Her publications by Manohar include Five Punjabi Centuries (2000) The City in Indian History (2005) Ports and their Hinterlands 17001950 (2019) and Agrarian System of the Sikhs: Late EighteenthEarly Nineteenth Century (2019). Her other recent publications are The Ghadar Movement (conjoint Pbi University 2013) and A Political Biography of Maharaja Ripudaman Singh of Nabha 18831942 (conjoint OUP 2018).
