Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905-1947

Download or read book Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905-1947 written by Suranjan Das and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 developing relationships between elite and popular participation in violence, and between the religious and secular features of their mobilization.