Mia Ramnaths book Decolonising Anarchism subtitled An Antiauthoritarian history of the Indian Freedom Struggle is a somewhat unorthodox approach

to history which tries to demonstrate the evolution of critical thinking and different oppositional stances and movements in India before and after Independence. As she says in the introduction of the book the aim is to bring an anticolonial approach to anarchism and an anarchist approach to anticolonialism. A lot of research in the past decade and at present has been focussing on the untold and ignored aspects of indias freedom struggle. The trend is best exemplified in the important and by now highly acclaimed and influential work done by the so called subaltern history project initiated by Ranajit Guha. In her book she talks of those strands of the freedom struggle which were more radical in their critique and conception of the state that was to emerge in the newly formed nation. Throughout the book she traces the usage and influence of anarchist ideas in the kind of differing strategies used by the different leaders and groups that she focuses on. She traces the development of critical thinking about the state by examining the positions and stances of important leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Hardayal of the Ghadar Party, Lotvala, Bhagat Singh, Jayprakash Narayan and other less well known leaders and she continues her analyses of the ongoing oppositions and movements for emancipator rights and freedom(s) almost into the twenty-first century. Ramnath has demonstrated how all these leaders were all negotiating with the issue of individual freedom vis-a-vis the state from their individual location in their own ways. In the process she has also pointed out how sometimes some of the exiled leaders found important allies in the anarchists in foreign countries like Britian, France and the United States among others who were also engaged in the oppositional struggles for more freedom against their own states. It is heartening to know how some of our leaders were so very deeply concerned with the very issue of the misuse of the immense power of the state which is now becoming increasing pronounced and important. As is well known Tagore had always been critical of nationalism though not from a class angle, Gandhi has often talked of the freedom of the village republics in ancient India and Jayprakash campaigned for all his life against the disproportionate powers of the state and for the decentralisation of power. The issues of decentralisation and the nature of the state (as to be most suitable in terms of the freedom and independence of the people) continue to be debated today in our country especially in the wake of intermittent protests and the rise of separatist movements (like in Kashmir and the North-East and even Telangana) and other insurrectionary movements that keep on happening still from time to time has been dealt with at length in the book. This book brings to focus the important question of how many of those goals have been achieved or how much has the relationship between the majority of people and the state improved in all these decades after Independence. The freedom fighters were fighting against the British state but the fight for better lives and more freedoms as well as the fight against the state continues in other ways and newer social movements the evolution of some of which has been discussed in the book. In general this book is an important contribution to the history of the struggles against the centralised state and their evolution in India.