If you are into marxism etc you will love it. Otherwise its more of a imaginary fairytail rather than a History book. For any serious student of Bengal history this will be a waist.

A carefully woven fantastic book. Not only should all bengalis read it, all south asians should learn from her research.

Joya Chatterjee has admirably argued and documented an aspect of Bengali politics long ignored, and still often unacknowledged (see other customer reviews!), by most Hindu Bengalis. It is true that the Muslim governments of the 30s and 40s did little to win over their confidence, but the Hindus themselves have a much longer history of bearing contempt for the Bengali Muslims, whom they hardly recognized as Bengalis. In an acute irony of history, it is these "mlecchas" who have achieved the first and only Bengali state in the world, while the West Bengalis have become a virtual colony of the "Hind Raj." Both Bengals would be faring much better today if they could have found some way to remain together when there was a real opportunity for that. The failure lies as much with the people as with the leaders - not only political, but cultural as well. And Chatterjee brings all this out with fascinating new scholarly reserach.