Communal riots in Bengal, 1905-1947

by Suranjan Das

This book examines the changing pattern of Hindu-Muslim rioting in Bengal between 1905 and 1947. It has utilized and adapted methods and terminologies employed in contemporary scholarship to investigate a wide range of historical events and processes which are difficult to comprehend when ordinary norms of behaviour prevail. In examining the major riots in Bengal between 1905 and 1947 the author has addressed the following issues: how an increased conjunction of elite and popular communalism created the necessary background for the riots; why the riots lost their initial class basis and became overtly communal; how a crowd-leadership dichotomy often asserted their 'autonomy'; and finally, how the riots promoted communal consciousness at various levels of society and polity which provided an important backdrop to the partition of the province in 1947. Against the background of the larger political dilemmas confronting India in the pre-partition period, this work has analysed the develop