Articles by Amalendu Guha

Amalendu Guha India and the Indian Ocean 1500-1800 edited by Ashin Das Gupta and M N Pearson; Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1987; pp xi + 363 and one map, Rs 240.

The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630-1720 by Om Prakash (Princeton University Press, 1985) pp xii + 291 including one map, tables, figures, bibliography and index. Price not stated.

An Analysis of Its Background and Implications Keya Dasgupta Amalendu Guha In this joint paper a geographer and a historian combine to make a post-mortem of the controversial 1983 Assam elections, down to the constituency levels. With the help of maps and poll statistics which bring out the significance of the ethnicity factor in the 1983 sanguinary elections, the authors conclude that although the voter turn-out was just half of what it was in the preceding 1978 Assembly poll for the state as a whole, there was normal to high polling in 40 per cent of the 105 constituencies where elections were contested and could be completed. These normal-to-high poll constituencies are, by and large, coterminous with seven of Assam's sixteen districts.

Ideological Roots of the Permanent Settlement Amalendu Guha THE EIGHTEENTH century was still an age of imperialism of trade. As long as other European nations, remained mercantilist, Britain's Indian possessions in Adam Smith's view were necessary for ensuring free trade with the East. Yet he wrote of colonies as "a most unwholesome liability" for Britain's political economy of capitalism as such. Even a practical man like Warren Hastings, who had enthusiastically taken part in the expansion of -British dominion there, viewed the conqueror's task to be only "to improve the advantages of a temporary possession and protract that decay which sooner or later must end it" (p 159). In such a gloomy milieu, the post-1765 land revenue policy in Bengal drifted like a rudderless boat. It was empiricist and shortsighted, resulting in insecurity of property, oppression and famines. Philip Francis was not an expansionist like Hastings; he was "content with what we possess" (p 158) in Bengal. Yet his attitude differed significantly from that of Hastings; not in respect of just such trivialities, but otherwise. He wanted to play a positive role inasmuch as he aimed at achieving a 'permanence of dominion' and set upon himself the mission "to save this glorious empire" (pp 38 and 90).

Little Nationalism Turned Chauvinist A Summing Up Amalendu Guha IN continuation of my reply to Gail Cmvedt (EPW, April 25), I may inform that the left's concern for Assam's acute underdevelopment and immigration problems goes back much beyond November 1980 and is, in no way, a by-product of "pressure from the movement". As demanded by her, some relevant facts of the post-independence period regarding "what the CPI and CPI(M) were saying about the issue years earlier" are presented below in Section I. Sanjib Kumar Baruah's comment (EFW, April 11) is examined in Section II. My final position, in its immediate operational aspects, is restated in Section III.