Review by Choice Review
Following a description of the role and functions of the nationalist, socialist, and communist movements in India during the pre- and early postindependence eras, Omvedt discusses the geneses and roles of the Dalit (Down-trodden) Panthers, women's movement, the Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh Farmers' agitations for better market prices, and the movements mobilizing public protests against damage to habitat and ecology of forest areas in the central and northern parts of the country. She also considers the violent agrarian movements led by the Bengal/Bihar Naxalites and the People's War group of Andhra Pradesh, ethnic/cultural/lingustic dissidence in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Panjah, and the northeast. Use of land and water resources, equal rights for women, and revolts against the caste system inspired the major movements discussed. All these had disparate objectives and constituencies, few are easily amenable to traditional Marxist analysis centered on the ideology of class war. Most were restricted to specific areas and segments of population and were reformist rather than revolutionary in their intent or content. A great deal of work has obviously gone into the making of this book. A clearly structured focus and less use of dated Marxist jargon would have considerably improved the study, which now reads more like an assemblage of extensive notes and scattered analyses than a coherently argued thesis. Graduate; faculty. B. G. Gokhale; emeritus, Wake Forest University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
