The richness of historical detail with which David Hardiman has woven his narrative would amaze even the most hardened empiricist. But there is something about the style which sustains one’s interest even when the going is slow. When one sifts the detail, there emerge two cen¬tral themes which seem to have guided the author in his research, namely, the textures of social differentiation and of mass mobilization. Although social stratification subsumes economic differentiation, it means going considerably be¬yond it to reference groups which form the basis of social action. Hardiman is fully alive to this problem. The questions implicit in his work would consequently read some¬thing like this: What were the crucial social divides in Kheda district? What social groups were mobilized by the Cong¬ress? How much of a Gandhian archetype was Kheda? What was the pattern of mobilization, and from where was the impetus derived? For instance, Dhanagre, Siddiqi and Pandey see the dynamic of rural agitation as flowing from two diametrically oppo-site sources:
Jan-Feb 1982, volume 6, No 4