Includes bibliographical references.

For the past forty years or more, the most influential, respected, and popular scholar of modern Indian history has been Sumit Sarkar. When his first monograph, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903–1908, appeared in 1973 it soon became obvious that the book represented a paradigm shift within its genre. As one eminent historian put it when the work was republished in 2010: “Very few monographs, if any, have ever rivalled the meticulous research and the thick description that characterised this book, or the lucidity of its exposition and the persuasive power of its overall argument.