Book Reviews – Is This Azaadi? Everyday Lives of Dalit Agricultural Labourers in a Bihar Village

Anand Chakravarti, Is This Azaadi? Everyday Lives of Dalit Agricultural Labourers in a Bihar Village,

Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2018, (xiv+266) 280

pages, Rs 750.

This book is a major contribution to the ongoing research in the academic sphere on the subject of the peasant psyche. It is a problematic which had intrigued political philosophers and practitioners ranging from Karl Marx in the nineteenth century to Mao in the twentieth century. It had continued to attract serious attention from a galaxy of academics and historians like Barrington Moore, Eric Wolf, David Arnold and James Scot in the west, and Suprakash Ray, Ranajit Guha, Nirmal Kumar Chandra, D.N. Dhanagare, Ghanashyam Shah and Tariq Omar Ali among others in the Indian sub-continent. What distinguishes this book from the earlier theoretical discourses is the author’s field-work findings, which he brings together in a sort of ‘son et lumiere’ that helps to illuminate their arguments with the voices of the peasants and the sights of their daily living.