ABSTRACT
This introduction covers the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book departs from the earlier narratives, and tells the untold stories which played a significant role in defining the trajectory of modern Assam. It begins by examining the economic and social processes that helped in creating the agrarian landscape of Assam in the first half of the twentieth century, and by retelling the early days of the engagement of colonial rulers with the peasants in Assam. The book discusses the changing relations between various sections of peasantry, state, landed gentry, and politics of different ideological hues; nationalist, communist and socialist; and shows how a primarily agrarian question concerning peasantry came to occupy the centre stage in the nationalist politics of the state. It illustrates that the general nature of sharecropping had also varied in correspondence to the nature of peasant proprietorship.
