Peasant History of Late Pre-colonial and Colonial India By Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, Pearson Longman, Rs 2,700

Those of us who have had the privilege of knowing Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri and his work will immediately recognize this massive book as the product of a lifetime’s focused and unrelenting research. Over the years, we have often wondered why Chaudhuri was not publishing his magnum opus on peasants and Indian agriculture. He has now fulfilled all expectations.

This is not only an analytical statement of Chaudhuri’s own views on a vast and complex subject, but it is also a detailed survey of the existing literature on themes relating to the histories of peasants in colonial India. There is nothing that Chaudhuri has not read on the subject. This, by itself, is an amazing feat and gives to Chaudhuri’s book an encyclopaedic character. It is difficult to imagine the achievement that this book embodies being surpassed in the near future. It will stand as a benchmark of commitment to scholarship and devotion to the simple but often neglected dictum that there is no surrogate for hard labour. Chaudhuri is no stranger to theory and to theoretical debates, but he does not allow these to derail him from the historian’s craft of presenting facts and analyses.

Peasant history of late pre-colonial and colonial India is dominated by two very big questions. One relates to the state of the Indian economy, more specifically the agrarian economy, in the period of Mughal decline in the 18th century — did the economy decline with the polity? The other is about the impact of the colonial State on Indian agrarian change — did it represent a break or not? Chaudhuri begins with the first issue and ends with the second one.

Chaudhuri surveys the historiography of the 18th century and compares what he calls the “classical view’’ — the century was one of overall decline — to the “revisionist” one. The latter argues that there was no decline, only a shift from the centre to the regions, and in the regions, features of economic growth and energy were noticeable. What was equally significant was the emergence and integration of new social groups. He considers the debate to be “inconclusive’’, but makes the very relevant observation that the regional powers intervened more powerfully in local rural society. This intervention, however, did not augment the regions’ productive resources. The intrusion facilitated the redistribution of sources in favour of the State rather than their appropriation by the new social groups. In other words, the over-arching dominance of the State in the Mughal economy of the 17th century came to be re-enacted in the regions in the 18th century.

Historians analysing the impact of the colonial State are divided between those who see a radical break and those who see continuity. Here Chaudhuri posits a middle ground arguing that while the colonial State built itself on pre-colonial institutions and practices, there were clear imperial choices involved in the kind of use the colonial State made of those institutions. This meant that those institutions came to be modified. He, however, makes the statement, “The direct role of the State in vital agrarian changes tended to diminish over the years.’’

In between these two questions, Chaudhuri looks at the organization of the peasant economy and the way it was determined by ecology and policies; the response of the peasants to the market and commercialization, the social framework of peasant production and so on.