Historians of modern India have recently been paying increased attention to the founders of nationalist politics in the provinces, in growing recognition that the heredity of the Indian National Congress was influenced by complex institutional patterns going back some decades before its birth in 1885. These patterns were rooted in widely varying local and regional conditions. To the extent that the local political associations were designed by a Western-educated professional class with the common purpose of influencing policy decisions of the British Raj, they can all be understood within the context of British imperial politics. But the associations' leaders, the spokesmen of Indian nationalism in its early forms, had to confront a second audience as well as the British: the largely traditional society of their birth. Their relationship to that society was probably the most controversial and misunderstood dimension of their lives, yet it was crucial to the growth of regionally distinctive variations of later mass nationalism.

At the moment, India, with two Congress Parties, two Jana Sanghs, two Socialist Parties, two D.M.K.s, two Akali Dals and two Communist Parties (the third Communist Party—the C.P.M.L.—has been declared illegal after the present emergency), presents a picture with ‘splitism’ as the common denominator. The split in the Communist Party of India occurred at a time when the Communist movement all over the world was in disarray, showing polycentric trends on account of Sino-Soviet polemics. In addition to this, the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 also put serious strain on the party unity. Therefore, most of the studies that were undertaken on the C.P.I, split ascribed it either to the Sino-Soviet schism or to the Sino-Indian border war, or to both. However, an analysis of the authoritative pronouncements of two factions and an examination of their political resolutions indicate sharp differences on such issues as the character of the Congress Party, the nature of its government and the progressive and reactionary contents of its economic, home and foreign policy. The rightsts in the C.P.I, considered the national bourgeoisie Congress Party and its government as a progressive force and consequently advocated a policy of ‘Unity’ with it, in its fight against the parties of the Right reaction, such as the Jana Sangh, the Swatantra and the two variants of the Socialist Party.

Studies of Indian organized labour have followed the beaten track for three decades. In their obsessive concern with the political links of trade unions and their control by middle-class intellectuals and professionals, the students of Indian labour have barely paused to consider the social consequences of unionization. The origin of the labour movement in India goes back to the turn of the century, and over five million workers are now unionzed. A movement of this proportion cannot be without consequence for the attitudes and behaviour of workers. In the specifically Indian context the crucial question is how a trade union movement whose very cornerstone, at least ideally, is a sense of camaraderie among a socially diverse workforce interacts with a traditional society whose foundation is the caste system.

Most historians agree that the Mongolian revolution of 1921 was initiated by Soviet Russia and was imposed on the Mongols, who were nothing more than their passive tools. This must be at least partly due to the fact that so far, works on this subject have almost exclusively been based on materials of Russian and Chinese origin. Materials published in the Mongolian People's Republic, however, provide ample evidence that the Mongolian revolution originated in a purely Mongolian situation, though the Mongols could never have succeeded in their revolution without Soviet support.

The definition of China as a nation has often been contrasted with the definition of China as a culture. The modern Chinese state, it is said, has to displace the Middle Kingdom concept of the Great Tradition. The culturalism of dynastic China had to be transmuted into nationalism as China accepted the challenge of modernization. Truly, China has experienced revolution in the twentieth century; the political and cultural definition of China in the 1970s does differ from that of the 1870s. But perhaps our concentration on Chinese tradition as a deterrent to modernization has obscured the continuities of Chinese history. Though certain aspects of the Great Tradition hindered change in China, others contributed to it. The Chinese heritage provided the framework and orientation as Chinese selected elements from Western civilization, and while transforming their own tradition they also translated and transformed those importations designed to bring wealth and power. Reinterpretations of the importations were informed by Chinese perceptions of the past as well as of the present.

The temperance/prohibition agitation represents a fascinating chapter in the social and political history of India which has been largely ignored. If any notice is taken of this movement, it is generally dismissed (or elevated) as an example of the uniquely Indian process of ‘sanskritization’ or as an equally unique component of ‘Gandhianism’—in spite of the fact that the liquor question has not been without political importance in the history either of England or of the United States. And in spite of the fact that the temperance agitation in India in the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century was intimately connected with temperance agitation in England. Indeed the temperance movement in India was organized, patronized, and instructed by English temperance agitators.