The present volume is not a research publication in the conventional sense of the term. It is a collection of available documents on the historic 1959 Food Movement, which proved to be a turning point in the political history of West Bengal. This collection should be an important source-material contemporary West Bengal. The present documentary on the Food Movement consists of six parts. The first comprises documents of the Communist Party of India and its mass organizations like the All Indian Kisan Sabha on the food question in Bengal since the 1943 Famine. The second part is a selection of speeches, writings, recollections and statements on the Movement by leading Left personalities. The third part of the book incorporates reflections and commentaries on the Movement by leading Left personalities. The third part of the book incorporates reflections and commentaries on the Movement published in the leading dailies and weeklies of the time. Part four has reproduced selections from the debates in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council on the food issue and the Food Movement. The fifth part of the volume contains a selection from the debates on the Food Movement in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament). The food question in Bengal, following the 1943 famine and the subsequent Food Movement of 1959, attracted the attention of both contemporary writers and professional scholars. A selection from such writings constitutes the sixth part of the volume. This section also contains reproductions of pictures of public demonstrations and police brutalities during the Food Movement. This publication is the outcome of a collaborative project of the Netaji Institute for Asian Studies, Kolkata, and the UGC Special Assistance Programme of the Department of History, University of Calcutta.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Premansu Kumar Bandyopadhyay
Dr. Bandyopadhyay, M.A. in History and Political Science from the University of Calcutta and Ph.D. (History) from the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London started teaching at the R.S. Mahavidyalay, Ghatal, Midnapur, India. Afterwards he served as Research officer for the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi and South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany and then worked as Lecturer at the Southwark College, Kingsway – Princeton College, and North Longon College, under the Innder London Education Authority, UK. Dr. Bandyapadhyay joined the University of Calcutta in 1980 as a Lecturer in the Department of Islamic History & culture, and retired from there as Reader in 2000. His former publications include the Indian Famines and Agranian Problems, Calcutta 1986 and a number of research papers published in learned journals and periodicals. He has been engaged infurther research work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Suranjan Das
Suranjan Das is Professor of History at the University of Calcutta and Director, Netaji Institute for Asian Studies Group of the University of Calcutta. He received the D. Phil degree from the University of Oxford for the dissertation on ‘Communal Riots in Bengal 1905-1947’ which was subsequently published by Oxford University Press. His other publications include Caste and Communal Politics in South Asia (edited jointly with Sekhar Bandopadhyay: 1993), The Goondas: Towards A Reconstructioin of the Calcutta Underworld (jointly with Jayanta K. Ray: 1996) and Electoral Politics in South Asia (edited jointly with Subho Basu: 2000). Dr. Das was a Junior Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and has been a Visiting Fellow in Maison Des Sciences De L’Homme, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of New Mexico. He was also elected a Visiting Professor by the British Academy.
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