Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. The socio-economic fabric of Bombay's country side land tenure systems in the Presidency; the commercialization of agriculture and marketing Conditions; the impact of the great depression; usurious capital and its impact; the problem of land alienation in the Bombay presidency, problem of high incidence of rent; The condition of agricultural labourers; grievances of forest and canal zones; caste-class dynamics and untouchability. -- 2. Peasants, parties and politics, 1934-47: The Spread of organizational links from the urban centres to the rural Hinterland: 1934-36; peasant conferences: 1935-36; Faizpur and the consolidation of the rural base; tenant struggles in the Konkan region; tenant agitation in South Gujarat; the Hali agitation in Surat; congress and the problem of legality; mobilization on the eve of independence. -- 3.Survival, contested power and the polyphonic tribal resistance in Western India, 1934-47: Tribal resistance to the expanding colonial space; notions of law and crime in Criminogenic theories; adaptation/contestation for survival; the Sholapur criminal tribes settlement agitation; social reform, idiom of ethical values and elements of dissent; mass mobilization and contention for hegemony; challenging economic subjection through collective political action; the Warli peasant struggle. -- 4. Strategies of dalit mobilization: Caste structure and the politics of mobilization; political antecedents of dalit mobilization; the Gandhian strategy; the choices in Ambedkar's politics. -- 5. Crowd vigour and social identity: The Quit India Movement in Western India; the theory and historiography of crowd behaviour; crowd phenomena and the nature of the mass upsurge in the Bombay province: 9 August-10 September 1942; the decline of crowd activity and the emergence of the Karnataka pattern; the social composition of the Quit India Movement; the legend of Prati Sarkar in Satara.