The Communists in Post-Colonial Bengal, 1948-52: The Untold Story of 'Second' Tebhaga

West Bengal is a province of India where a communist party - the Communist Party of India (Marxist) - in coalition with some other leftist parties, has been continuously in power for nearly three decades now. It has been elected to and has held on to power within a democratic constitutional framework. But in the past the communists in Bengal have also used violent revolutionary methods to secure power. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s this part of the communist movement became known as the Naxalite movement and a significant literature already exists on this. But what is less known is that the events of the 1960s-70s had a historical precedent in 1948-49 in the early days of independence. It is this less known aspect of the long and chequered history of the communist movement in Bengal that this paper seeks to unravel. This story has remained untold for various reasons - the first being the problem of sources. During the period there were regular newspaper reports of unrest, but the newspapers did not either know or did not report everything that was happening, or in other words, the real extent of the communist insurgency that started in West Bengal from the middle of 1948 remained unknown to the general public. The communists themselves have not told this story until recently, because this was another failed attempt at what later came to be condemned as 'left adventurism'. The government knew through its intelligence network what was actually happening, but kept a veil of secrecy. The professional historians have not written about it because the archives were closed and there were no other sources. The recent release of the IB (Intelligence Branch) records at the West Bengal State Archives has broken that impasse, and these records can now help us reconstruct this story in some details, for the first time, albeit remain the dangers of trying to write the history of insurgency from the texts of counter-insurgency

Transfer of Power and the Crisis of Dalit Politics in India, 1945-47

Ever since its beginning, organized dalit politics under the leadership of Dr B. R. Ambedkar had been consistently moving away from the Indian National Congress and the Gandhian politics of integration. It was drifting towards an assertion of separate political identity of its own, which in the end was enshrined formally in the new constitution of the All India Scheduled Caste Federation, established in 1942. A textual discursive representation of this sense of alienation may be found in Ambedkar's book, 'What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables', published in 1945. Yet, within two years, in July 1947, we find Ambedkar accepting Congress nomination for a seat in the Constituent Assembly. A few months later he was inducted into the first Nehru Cabinet of free India, ostensibly on the basis of a recommendation from Gandhi himself. In January 1950, speaking at a general public meeting in Bombay, organized by the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, he advised the dalits to cooperate with the Congress and to think of their country first, before considering their sectarian interests. But then within a few months again, this alliance broke down over his differences with Congress stalwarts, who, among other things, refused to support him on the Hindu Code Bill. He resigned from the Cabinet in 1951 and in the subsequent general election in 1952, he was defeated in the Bombay parliamentary constituency by a political nonentity, whose only advantage was that he contested on a Congress ticket. Ambedkar's chief election agent, Kamalakant Chitre described this electoral debacle as nothing but a `crisis'

From Subjects to Citizens: Reactions to Colonial Rule and the Changing Political Culture of Calcutta in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

 Since   the Battle of Plassey (1757) and the subsequent reconstruction of Calcutta,   the city continually grew in size and splendour. 'It is difficult to   describe', wrote the Samachar Darpan in Apri11819, 'how Calcutta has   developed in the last sixty-two years. Today's Calcutta makes it difficult to   imagine how it looked before. The city where one could hardly find houses   worth even six thousand rupees, now can boast of buildings worth more than   three crores, not to speak of other forms of wealth.' 1 This development and   extension of Calcutta were as much due to its being a port city as to its   becoming the administrative centre of an expanding British empire in India.   It prospered as a colonial metropolis, simultaneously with the decline of the   older centres of trade and administration, such as Dacca, Murshidabad or   Hugli.

Morphological and cultural characterization of Phyllosticta zingiberi (Ramkr.) causing leaf spot disease of ginger

Isolation of ginger (Zingiber officinale) leaf spot pathogen form the UBKV farm field was done in the laboratory. The isolated pathogen was identified as Phyllosticta zingiberi on the basis of morphological characters as documented in taxonomic keys. The microscopic observation revealed that the pycnidia were globose to subglobose with dark brown colour measuring 124.16 ?m × 2.35 ?m in average. The pycnidio spores were hyaline, oval to bullet shaped, monoguttulate measuring 4.02 ?m × 2.35 ?m in average. Among the different media tested for growth highest growth was recorded in Oat meal agar (26.44 cm2) followed by malt extract agar (24.04 cm2) which was statistically at par. The temperature of 25?C favoured maximum growth (24.20 cm2). However, higher sporulation was observed in 30?C. Among the different carbon source tested, mannitol supported the highest growth of the pathogen (27.67 cm2)

Search for top squarks in the four-body decay mode with single lepton final states in proton-proton collisions at s \sqrt{s} = 13 TeV

A search for the pair production of the lightest supersymmetric partner of the top quark, the top squark (t∼1), is presented. The search targets the four-body decay of the t∼1, which is preferred when the mass difference between the top squark and the lightest supersymmetric particle is smaller than the mass of the W boson. This decay mode consists of a bottom quark, two other fermions, and the lightest neutralino (χ∼01), which is assumed to be the lightest supersymmetric particle. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. Events are selected using the presence of a high-momentum jet, an electron or muon with low transverse momentum, and a significant missing transverse momentum. The signal is selected based on a multivariate approach that is optimized for the difference between m(t∼1) and m(χ∼01). The contribution from leading background processes is estimated from data. No significant excess is observed above the expectation from standard model processes. The results of this search exclude top squarks at 95% confidence level for masses up to 480 and 700 GeV for m(t∼1) − m(χ∼01) = 10 and 80 GeV, respectively

Measurement of the cross section of top quark-antiquark pair production in association with a W boson in proton-proton collisions at s \sqrt{s} = 13 TeV

The production of a top quark-antiquark pair in association with a W boson $(t\bar{t}W)$ is measured in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The analyzed data was recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{−1}$. Events with two or three leptons (electrons and muons) and additional jets are selected. In events with two leptons, a multiclass neural network is used to distinguish between the signal and background processes. Events with three leptons are categorized based on the number of jets and of jets originating from b quark hadronization, and the lepton charges. The inclusive $(t\bar{t}W)$ production cross section in the full phase space is measured to be 868 ± 40(stat) ± 51(syst) fb. The $(t\bar{t}W)+$ and $(t\bar{t}W)−$ cross sections are also measured as 553 ± 30(stat) ± 30(syst) and 343 ± 26(stat) ± 25(syst) fb, respectively, and the corresponding ratio of the two cross sections is found to be 1.61±0.15(stat)$^{+0.07}_{−0.05}$(syst). The measured cross sections are larger than but consistent with the standard model predictions within two standard deviations, and represent the most precise measurement of these cross sections to date

Measurement of the Dependence of the Hadron Production Fraction Ratios fs/fuf_s / f_u and fd/fuf_d / f_u on BB Meson Kinematic Variables in Proton-Proton Collisions at s=13TeV\sqrt{s} = 13 TeV

The dependence of the ratio between the $B^0_s$ and $B^+$ hadron production fractions, $f_s/f_u$, on the transverse momentum $(p_T)$ and rapidity of the $B$ mesons is studied using the decay channels $B^0_s→J/ψϕ$ and $B^+→J/ψK^+$. The analysis uses a data sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected by the CMS experiment in 2018 and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $61.6  fb^{−1}$. The $f_s/f_u$ ratio is observed to depend on the $B$ $p_T$ and to be consistent with becoming asymptotically constant at large $p_T$. No rapidity dependence is observed. The ratio of the $B^0$ to $B^+$ meson production fractions, $f_d/f_u$, is also measured, for the first time in proton-proton collisions, using the $B^0→J/ψK^{*0}$ decay channel. The result is found to be within 1 standard deviation of unity and independent of $pT$ and rapidity, as expected from isospin invariance