After 9/11, studies in the history of Indian anticolonialism began to examine the occurrence of political violence—construed by the British as terrorism—that accompanied nonviolent campaigns. Gentlemanly Terrorists is the first major contribution in this recent wave of scholarship to focus on Bengal, described by the British as a “hotbed of terrorism” in India. Ghosh explores the rise of violent political protest in Bengal following World War I and British attempts to counter it with repressive legislation. She demonstrates that the slow process of political reform in India was shadowed by the gradual extension of repressive powers. The government aimed its policies at rewarding and punishing political energies, pushing them into “constitutional channels” of negotiation and concession seeking, and away from acts of subversion and violence. This dialectic produced a framework for “good” and “bad” citizenship, creating the perverse scenario “in which patriotism requires political agreement with the state” (245).
Existing...