From the dustjacket of the original edition

BENGAL’S GREEN and pleasant fields have passed through many a vicissitude. It was here amidst the mango groves of Plassey that Clive planted the British flag; and it was here that the banner of revolt against British rule was first raised and hundreds mounted the gallows. This is the soil out of which have sprouted legion of poets—from the humble village bards to the great Tagore—who have sung of brother hood and freedom. Today that very soil is drenched with the blood of brothers killed by brothers.

And through these fields trekked a young Englishman in the winter of 1945. He met the town people, spoke to the officials, listened to the students, watched election battles, went round the huts and stayed with the peasants. And the harvest that was reaped is rich in its content as well as diversity. It combines the freshness of a tourist’s impressions with [the] objectivity of a student’s observations. The sketches that illustrate the text were drawn by the author himself during his travels.

The jacket of the book is from a photograph taken by Sunil Jonah illustrative of the typical Bengal landscape and the binding is of Jute—the golden fibre of Bengal to which reference has been made in these pages.ALEC JOHNSON is the pen-name of a young Englishman in uniform, who, along with thousands of others during the war, has seen India from the Forces. In civil life he is an architect, and has taken a leading part in spreading Trade Unionism amongst technicians in the Building Industry. He was associated with Professor J. B. S. Haldane and others in a long struggle for efficient Air Raid Shelters in Britain during the last war.

He is an extensive traveller and has seen the villages of most of the countries in Europe. He twice went to the Soviet Union, in 1937 and again in 1939. On the day the war was declared, he was in Moscow leading the first party of British architects to study Building and Town Planning in the Soviet Union.