ABSTRACT
The Punjab has a distinctive history which is very different from that of other parts of India. Their last major conquest in India, the British ruled the province for less than 100 years. Economically, the land of five rivers was to become India’s granary in the late colonial period. Militarily, it was the province from which the post-Mutiny armies of British India were mainly recruited. Socially, the Punjab had a unique mix of Muslims (the majority community), Hindus and Sikhs. Administratively and politically, its trajectory was unlike that of the rest of India. In the Punjab the British had their greatest successes, whether by its rule, in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the so-called Punjab tradition of administration or, later during dyarchy, by achieving the successful working of ministries which were supra-communal and which managed to repulse the inroads of the all-India parties of nationalism, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. Yet it is particularly ironic that the Punjab, a model of difference and by most standards of colonial success, should, when the British left India, have been torn apart in a bloody partition which left much of its society, its economy and its polity in tatters. The purpose of radical politicians was to dig under the surface of the Punjab, which superficially seemed so loyal and prosperous. Throughout British rule the radical students and militants, often ideologically confused and always outside the mainstream of politics, remained a tiny minority. But radicals on the left were evidence of quite deep currents of discontent and they throw new light on the peculiar, and peculiarly interesting, political history of the Punjab.
