National Integration in Historical Perspective- A Cultural Rgeneration in Eastern India

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I have great pleasure in introducing National Integration in Historical Perspective-a Cultural Regeneration in Eastern India by Dr. Rabindra Nath Chakraborty, M.A. (Triple), Ph.D. to the reading intelligentsia. The myth of cultural disunity and political diversity of India was harped by the British imperialist writers which assumed a menacing dimension within a period of thirty years after independence of India from the foreign yoke. Despite her stunted capitalist development, India today is on the verge of socio-political disintegration since her numerous ethnic groups each with its glorious heritage are on the breaking point due to its asymmetrical development and regional imbalance. It is high time that our research scholars should direct their attention to discover the essential cultural unity in the Indian way of life under the historical perspective. The object of study in the present work is to explore the trends of unity binding eastern India since geographical location and ethnic settlements had evolved the unity in wet paddy cultivation and bamboo based industry bringing uniformity in the way of life of the people, in their value system and supplying uniformity in the evolution of socio-economic institutions from a long glorious past. Again changes and continuity in agrarian life, in surplus value of labour leading to surplus exchange brought homogeneity in trade and commerce. With this object in view the study was undertaken within the time-frame of the tenth through the sixteenth centuries, viz, within the time-frame of five hundred years.

The author in this book has posed the basic question: was there any fundamental unity in the socio-cultural life of Bengal and Orissa from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries?

There was a wide diversity in dynasties, administrative units, language and dialects, customs, life style and religious value systems in eastern India. Out of this diversity, geographical location and ethnic homogeneity had brought in socio-cultural unity to the people of eastern India. Despite this under- current flow of cultural unity because of the internecine war. Fare among the successive rulers, feudalisation of the economy and militarisation of civil offices the political diversity cropped up and brought about disintegrating forces in the political institutions culminating in the collapse of the martial spirit of the people and end of the occeanic trade. The result was the Muslim conquest of eastern India without any strong military resistance. But why this military defeat despite its past glory of military adventure and maritime ascendancy, despite its abundant raw resources and a big idle population with an annual spiral growth rate? The questions, is it something inherent in the bio-physical environment and life style of the people ingrained in its tropical climate and food habits or was it caused by the inevitable 'decline in socio-economic institutions and value systems, wait for their solutions.

**Contents and Sample Pages**