Subaltern School of Historiography

1

SUBALTERN SCHOOL OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Meaning of the word ‘sublatern’: Literally, Lower in position or rank; secondary. Chiefly British. Literally meaning "subordinate", subordinate", The term subaltern is used in the British military to describe commissioned officers below the rank of rank of captain captain and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant of lieutenant..

in postcolonial theory to refer to Philosophically , In historiography The term subaltern is used in postcolonial marginalized groups and the lower classes; this sense of the word was coined by Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci. In his 1996 essay "Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism" Homi Bhabha emphasizes the importance of social power relations in his working definition of 'subaltern' groups as oppressed, minority groups whose presence was crucial to the self-definition of the majority group: subaltern social groups were also in a p osition to subvert the authority of those who had hegemonic power. Ranjit Guha in the Preface to the Subaltern Studeis: Studeis: Writings on South Asian History and Society Vol 1 uses the word subaltern as given in the concise Oxford Dictionaryt is of ‘inferior rank’. The word is used in the Subaltern Studies ‘as a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether this is expressed in terms class, caste, age, gender, and office or in any other way.’ First use of the the term ‘subaltern’: The ‘subaltern' was largely a term employed in place of 'proletariat' 'proletariat' by Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian socialist, political political theorist, theorist, and activist.He used it with the express purpose p urpose of evading prison censors. He did d id not use Prison Notebooks related to consciously the term of class as a methodological conceptWorks: conceptWorks: Prison Subaltern groups

REF IN Subaltern Studies:Hegemony and Speech By Tabish Khair.

The Origin of the Subaltern Studies Group

The Subaltern Studies group was founded in India in 1982 by Ranjit Guha, an Indian historian, who now lives in Australia (Australia seems to be a place of residence and postdoctoral research center for many other other members of the school). Guha edited the first six six volumes of the series series of publica publicatio tions ns bearin bearing g the group's group's name. name.

A biogra biographi phical cal sketch sketch shows shows that during during

1979-1980, Guha and a number of younger historians, then living in England, held a series of intensive discussions on Indian Indian colonial history; this led to the formation of their group in 1982. The group published its first volume in 1983. In 1971, during a visit to India, Guha had become

Trusted by over 1 million members

Try Scribd FREE for 30 days to access over 125 million titles without ads or interruptions! Start Free Trial Cancel Anytime.









2

involved with the Maoist students students movement in Delhi; some of these students subsequently went to study in England. England. Perhaps Perhaps it is no coincidence that most of the founding founding members members of the Subaltern Studies group had connections with the Maoist Maoist groups in Delhi and Calcutta. Today most of them have close connections with the academic communities of England and Australia and now in the United States as well. What is Subaltern Historiography?. Protest Against Elitist Historigraphy: Subaltern Studies is a school that originated in India in 1982. The founding members of the group, Ranjit Ranjit Guha protested that historiography historiography of Indian nationalism is biased with elitism (The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources thus leading to the control, rule, or domination by such a group or class) of two kinds which maintain that the d evelopment of Indian national consciousness and the making of Indian nation were the elite achievements. The two kinds of elitist historiography against which the subalternists wrote were:

1)Colonialist elitism elitism or Colonial or British imperialist imperialist historiography 2) Bourgeois nationalist elitism. Both of these elitist historiographical trends were the product of of British rule in India and have survived the transfer of power. Now they are used to maintain the neo-colonial and neonationalist hold over the people and resources of the vast majority of Indian lower classes. In the colonialist and neo-colonialist historiography the British colonialist rulers, administrators, policies, parliamentary institutions and colonial political culture are credited with starting the process in which Indian national consciousness developed and culminated. It describes Indian nationalism as a function of stimulus and response, the one which we see in behaviouristic psychology. The bourgeois nationalist elitist historiography represents the growth and victory of Indian nationalist as sum of the activities and ideas ideas by which leaders of Indian Indian elite class response to the institutions, opportunities, resources which the Colonial master elite created or introduced. It represents Indian nationalism as an Idealist venture in which Indigenous elite led people to freedom from chains of the colonial British elite. Ranji Guha “ Some Aspects of the Historiography Historiography of Colonial India” p 1-2 Guha does not totoally disregard the uses of elities historiography but he asserts that elitist









3

Civil Society, Society, (Subaltern studies III p 153), Partha Chatterjee expose the myth of charisma of Mahatama Gandhi . The elitist historiography is inadequate to present the whole p icture of politics because of its commitment to its class outlook. Ibid., 3 The ‘un-historical historiography’ leaves out the politics of the people a nd overlooks ‘another domain of Indian politics in which the principal actors were not the dominant elite g roups ,whether colonial or indigenous, but the subaltern classes and groups constituting the mass of laboring population and the intermediate strata in town and country--- that is, the people.’ Ibid., 4. Guha sums up his essay by calling elities historiography ‘an oppressive fact’. Ibid., 7 By authoring a parallel historiography of the people, the subalternists responded to a genuine need for a new methodology, epistemology, and paradigm, a need felt not only in India but worldwide. Borrowing from Gramsci the concept of "subaltern" and drawing on the the prevailing Western ideas about the historiography of mass culture, Subaltern Studies tried to provide new interpretations and methodologies for writing Indian working-class working-class history. Subalternists maintained that colonialist, nationalist, and Marxist interpretations of Indian history had denied the role of the common people and their their agency. To rectify this situation, Subaltern Studies Studies announced that its new approach would restore history to the subordinated. subordinated. In addition, the group theorized that the elite in India played a dominant part during the colonial period and not merely a hegemonic role. With the logic of this this new interpretation, the Subalternists were able to to show that subordinated people (i.e., subalterns) were autonomous historical persons who acted on their own because they were not led by any elite group. Subaltern Studies also claims that it can find Indian subalterns' voices, despite problems with sources: Indian peasants and workers have not kept diaries, as British British workers have done. This absence of "workers' authentic voices" led to a shift in the methodology of the Subaltern Studies. Using Using

method methodolo ology, gy, Subalter Subaltern n Studie Studiess now concentra concentrates tes on how the knowle knowledge dge of

history history was produced and how its constructio construction n can be "decolonized." "decolonized." In raising raising these "new" questions, the Indian Subalternists realized that they could write history only from a position of subalternity because India, as a British colony, itself (as a sub-continent and its people, but irrespective of class structure) was a subaltern.









4

Vinayak Chaturvedi in his introduction to Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial notes, Postcolonial notes, "At the end of the 1970s, Ranajit Guha - the founding editor of Subaltern Studies -- and a group of young historians based in Britain embarked on a series of discussions about the contemporary state of South Asian historiography. From the onset, the underlying principle which united the group -- Shahid Amin, David Arnold, Partha Chatterjee, David Hardiman and Gyanendra Pandey -- was a general dissatisfaction with the historical interpretations of the 'Freedom Movement' in India which celebrated elite contributions in the making of the Indian nation while denying 'the politics of the people'. At one level, the idea of Subaltern Studies was conceived as a historiographical 'negation' of both a rigidly formulaic 'orthodox' Marxism and the 'Namierism' of the Cambridge School in Britian, both of o f which failed to account for the dynamic and improvisational mode of peasant political agency Aims of subaltern studies. 1) Rejectio Rejection n of elitist elitist histo historio riograp graphy hy

The preface states, a purpose and an agenda that "speak for a new orientation orientation within which many different styles, interests and discursive modes may find it possible to unite in their rejection of academic elitism and in their acknowledgement of the subaltern as the maker of his own history and the architect of his own destiny" (p. vii). The opening essay, "The Prose of Counter-Insurgency," by Ranajit Guha, sets the tenor for the volume as it issues valuable instructions regarding the decoding of the records of the Raj. Since these "hostile" sources form a major fount of information for historians especially, the reconstruction of the experiences of the ruled and the colonized cannot proceed without first clearing the rubble of distortions created by the official language of counterinsurgency. 2) Narrativ Narratives es of the the lower lower and subord subordinat inatee classes classes

Dipesh Chakrabarty, one of the historians associated with group of writers of subaltern studies says: The explicit aimof subaltern subaltern studies founded in the early 1980s, was to write the subaltern classes into the history of nationalism and the nation an d to combat all elitist biases in the writing of history. These original intellectual ambitions were political; but they did not necessarily come from the lives of the subaltern classes themselves. Looking back, however, I see the problem of "subaltern pasts" dogging the enterprise of Subaltern of Subaltern Studies from the very outset: indeed it is arguable that what differentiates the Subaltern Studies project from the older tradition of "history from below" is the self-critical awareness of this problem in the writings of the h istorians associated with this group. 3) New Research and Re-examination of subalternist histories









5

and contemporary South Asia"; the politics of publishing and marketing demands, of course, that we accept that the new and original research comes, most often, from old and established names in the field of historical and socio-cultural scholarship. And so we encounter, once again, erudite essays from Ranajit Guha, Gyan Prakash, Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana and David Lloyd, amongst others. The subjects under scrutiny range from a re-examination of the place of subalternist histories/stories histories/stories in critical studies, to explorations of writing/orality/ power in two forest communities of western India, nationalist ideology and historiography, and subalternity and science, the partition, politics, gender, labour and Irish "new histories". There is something in it for almost everyone with an interest in subalternist perspectives.

al they saw their aim as being to recover the struggles of the poor and the As with Thompson et al they outcast from the 'condescension of posterity' and the grip of 'official' left intellectuals. The collective focussed on peasant and tribal struggles, little work being done on urban movements with the exception of Dipesh of Dipesh Chakrabarty's Chakrabarty's 'Rethinking Working Class History' on the jute mill workers of Calcutta. But what was distinctive about their approach was the argument that these struggles, far from being creations of what they termed 'elite nationalism', were independ ent of it and much more radical. Gyan Pandy, for example, in the first issue of the journal demonstrated convincingly, in a study of the 1921-22 192 1-22 peasant struggle in Awadh, how Congress, far from initiating the struggle, had attempted to undermine it because the peasants were targeting Indian landlords who Congress wished to incorporate in their pa n-Indian alliance against the British. However the Subalterns weren't simply interested in illustrating the 'bourgeois' nature of India nationalism. They argued that movements from below had been hijacked by elite nationalism and subordinated to the nationalist project. When they wrote of combating 'grand narratives, it was the 'grand narrative' of anti-colonial nationalism they were targeting. Und oubtedly there was a very important core to their argument - essentially the 'nationalist leadership' had attempted to use 'highly controlled' struggles of the Indian masses in order to confront and then replace the colonial masters. But the collective's project had an even more ambitious aim: they wished to reconstruct peasant consciousness itself, and to demonstrate its autonomy from elite nationalist thought. In order to do so, they sought out both new sources and attempted to reread the traditional archives 'against the grain', all with the aim of recreating the mental world of the peasant insurgent. The issue of working-class "emancipation" because this was an important project for progressive-minded scholars and for most of the Subalternists. Subalternists. The general concern about subalterns implied a commitment commitment to the notion of social justice justice for oppressed and subordinated people.The subaltern historiography helps us understand people's lives, their actions, and their histories more meaningfully in terms of developing strategies for future action. In order to develop strategies, the Subaltern Studies develop a historiography which









6

Subaltern Studies series has appeeared in 10 volumes: It includes scholarly essays by the subalternists as Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, David Arnold and Gyan Pandey, but also some interesting critiques by, among others, C. A. Bayly and Sumit Sarkar. Both the essays and critiques expose the Subaltern project as an important, diverse and intellectually enabling one. Among other things, the collection helps trace the trajectory of recent Subaltern Studies texts moving further away from Marxism, with Subalternists arguing both for and against the movement

The profound generality--that nothing is safe from the subaltern-effect--has the power of a slogan, of a mobilising rationale, a rallying spirit which can pull together such different modes and themes of history-writing as the essays of Subaltern of Subaltern Studies . Individually, each contributor asserts a distinct mood. It is this which gives the volume its strength as a whole--the fact that multiple moods of history-writing could pervade a single and common slogan. 'The Small Voice of History' by History' by Ranjit Guha is an evaluation of where, and how, the "small" "small" voices could assume mythic proportions of authority, given a hearing. He names the ideology of nominating authority to certain events (as "historic") statism that which authorizes the dominant values of the state to determine the criteria of the historic and then examines the inadequacy of this ideology for a truly Indian historiography, given that it was introduced in India by the British in the nineteenth century, and suffers from, a predilection to speak "to us in the commanding voice of the state which by presuming to nominate the historic for us leaves us w ith no choice about our own relation to the past". Guha instructs us on how to be a discerning student of history by making the extra effort to hear, and interact with, the small voices that are otherwise drowned in the cacophony of statist commands. The Main Contributions to the Subaltern Studies have been made by: Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory (Oxford and Princeton) Dipesh Chakrabarty, ed., Subaltern Studies, Studies, Vol. VIII Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought & the Colonial World (Minnesota) World (Minnesota) Studies, Vol. VII (Oxford) Partha Chatterjee & G. Pandey, eds., Subaltern Studies, Ranajit Guha, Elementary Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency (Oxford) Studies, Vol. V (Oxford) Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies,











7

Eugene Irschik, Dialogue Irschik, Dialogue and History (Berkeley: Univ. of California) Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy (Oxford) Stree Shakti Sangathana,We Sangathana,We Were Making History (Zed Books) Veena Das, "Subaltern as Perspective", in Subaltern Studies VI , pp. 310-314. IV (Delhi: Gayatri C. Spivak, "Deconstructing Subaltern Historiography", in Subaltern Studies IV (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1986), or her introduction to Selected Subaltern Studies. Studies. Rosalind O'Hanlon, "Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia", Modern Asian Studies 22, 1 (1988):189-224. R Gyan Prakash, "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian CSSH 32, 2 (April 1990):383-408; also published in revised form as "Writing Historiography", CSSH 32, Post-Orientalist Histories Histories of the Third World: Indian Historiography Is Good to Think", in Colonialism and Culture, Culture, ed. Nicholas Dirks (Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 35388. R [CSSH: Comparative Studies in Society and History] Rosalind O'Hanlon and David Washbrook, "After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism, Criticism, and Politics in the Third World", CSSH 34, CSSH 34, 1 (Jan. 1992):141-167. R Gyan Prakash, "Can the 'Subaltern' Ride? A Reply to O'Hanlon and Washbrook", CSSH 34, CSSH 34, 1 (Jan. 1992):168-85. R Dipesh Chakrabarty, "History as Critique and Critique(s) of History." Economic History." Economic and Political Weekly 26, no. 37 (14 Sept. 1991):2162-66. R Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for 'Indian' Pasts?" Representations Pasts?" Representations,, no. 37 (Winter 1992):1-26. R









8

sho ws Kaushik Ghosh' s remarkable essay, on the other hand, is written in the ironic mood. He shows that the "primitive", far from being a relic of p ast centuries, was actually born in colonialmodernity as a highly profitable "waste" produced by p lantation capitalism. Marx's note on 'primitive accumulation', Kaushik shows, can thus be made to denote, literally, the making of a section of the world's population into "aborigines", into "p rimitive" labour, in fact much before the "primitive" was discursively constructed by evolutionary anthropology in the 1860s. Indrani Chatterjee 's essay on colour, gender and slavery, on its part, exudes the tragic mood, as she describes the creation of a genealogically suspended community of 'half-castes', rejected by both the colonizer and the colonized, through slave-concubinage and the use of slave-women's children as clerical and manual labour by the East India Company's military establishment. She urges a rethinking of both the idea of family and the scope of slavery-studies, in view of this dimension of early colonialism in India which created a coloured and labouring community through the manipulation of "marriages" and "households".

"no t-for-a-moment Sundar Kaali , on his part, borrows the hopeful mood from what he calls the "not-for-a-moment silent" subaltern politics. . In a beautiful essay that puts together ea rly Indian textual traditions, contemporary oral narratives and subtle political insights, he reckons with the politics of spatialization in the context of south Indian villages, towns and temples. Ishita Banerjee Dube discusses Mahima Dharma, a subaltern religious movement in Orissa, and its mobilization and appropriation of the colonial legal apparatus in the construction of the idea of an "authentic" religion. ISSUES AND THEMES DISCUSSED IN THE SUBALTERN STUDIES:

Since Since 1983 the Subalt Subaltern ern Studi Studies es collec collectiv tivee has produce produced d 10 volume volumess and severa severall monographs (A scholarly piece of writing of essay or book length on a specific, often limited subject). Ranjit Guha edited the first six volumes (1982), which had various themes including









9

Beginning with Volume 7 (1993), the editorship of the series shifted shifted from Ranjit Ranjit Guha to Partha Chatterje Chatterjeee and Gyanendra Gyanendra Pandey. Pandey. The themes in volume 7 and 8 are different different from those in the previous previous six volumes. They revolve mainly around the nation, the community, the Bengali middle class, forest people, colonial prisons, India's partition and historiography, and Indian religion and language. This difference in themes was was noted by one reviewer for Volume 8, who commented that "the contents of this volume, like those of its immediate predecessor, seem to to confirm confirm a marked marked shift shift of emphasi emphasiss in the the project project of Subaltern Subaltern Studie Studies." s." He added "Over "Over the years, years, most most member memberss of its editoria editoriall collec collectiv tivee have moved moved from from documen documentin ting g subaltern dissent to dissecting elite discourse, from writing with (Socialist) passion to following the (postmod (postmodern ernist ist)) fashio fashion. n.

Intell Intellect ectual ual histor history, y, refram reframed ed as 'disco 'discours ursee analy analysis sis'' . . . is

emphatically not subaltern studies".

Critiq ique ue of Colo Coloni nial al Hist Histor ory y and and un unco cove veri ring ng the the inte intern rnal al hist histor ory y of the the 1) Crit Colonized People :

Postcolonia l history, then, has at its heart a critique of nationalism and the nation-state. It seeks to uncovering uncovering the internal internal history of colonised colonised peoples, peoples, especially especially of ‘subalterns ‘subalterns’’ - those repres repressed sed within within societ society, y, whose whose identi identity ty is impose imposed d from from outsid outsidee by histor historian ianss and other other commentators. This means asserting the validity of other cultures, and assessing the extent to which which Europea European n cultur cultural al models models have determ determine ined d identi identitie tiess and cultur cultural al norms norms in the nonEuropean world. The construction of knowledge - including science and the analysis of the natural world - are of crucial importance. 2) Peasant Peasantss and and workin working g class class peoples peoples

Dipesh Chakrabarty 'Rethinking working-class history: Bengal 1890-1940' Princeton, 2000,









10

begin to justify their existence in terms of indigenous cultures and norms. In particular, the development of a Hindu-based state ideology in India, and the adherence to this by some subaltern groups, have made it more difficult to attribute the evils of nation-states to the following of western ideological models. This has also led to charges that some 'subaltern' writings may be used to justify to justify political ideologies of cultural dominance. Postcolonial histories have always been subject to attack on the grounds of essentialism and ‘nativism’, and from those who argue that consciousness and identity are not fixed entities determined by timeless cultures but can change, especially in response to changes in material circumstances. The term ‘postcolonialism’ suggests that colonialism was the decisive episode of modern history that established the dominance of western power and knowledge over all ‘others’, yet some historians of eighteenth-century empire have argued that ‘colonial knowledge’ was not imposed from outside, but was created by the interaction of indigenous informants and colonial rulers. However, the central insights of postcolonial history remain valuable - espec ially in getting us to think about the construction of ideas about society, about ‘progress’ and about the state, and the ways in which the familiar analysis of the ‘rise of the West’ has been conditional on the discourse of western scholarship. 4) Gende enderr Bias Bias:: Men embody rationality, thought, non-feeling, justice, critical judgment, objectivity, sternness, individuality, and propensity for violence and acquisition. Women embody feeling, fickleness, cunning, purity, subjectivity, spirituality, possessiveness, delicacy, virtue, depen dence, sensuousness, and unbrazened sexuality.The contradictory nature of these qualities reinforced the unity and rationality of the male while at the same time proving the fickleness and fragmentation of the female and hence her 'natural' unfitness for public life. For Aristotle, the citizens are the "integral parts" of the polis while women, children, slaves, mechanics and laborers are the "necessary conditions." 5) Race Race and Caste Caste Issues Issues

The subaltern studies group has been particularly important in restoring to historical and political work the hitherto invisible working and peasant classes with shades of lower castes and races of









11

elitist bias from history and to empower the people of the lower classes and castes in India and raised their consciousness. 2) Devel Developi oping ng new new Metho Methodol dology ogy

a bid to fill in important methodological and historiographical gaps and to question the rigidities of Marxism and dominant schools of academic historiography. 3) Exegesi Exegesiss and Inter Interpret pretatio ations ns of the the Texts Texts

Subaltern Studies has admirably discharged these self-imposed responsibilities, producing in the process a series of excellent studies and leading to the exegesis of texts and times overlooked by most (but by no means all) previous historians. In the process, Subaltern Studies has also provided (or, rather, made more visible) productive ways o f looking at larger issues: for example, subaltern/peasant violence as an agential rather than an irrational act. 4) Expansion of critical and theoretical scope

This expansion of critical and theoretical scope has benefited the fast growing body of South Asian sociocultural studies, providing it with the (predictable, but) dependab le subalternist slant, routed, usefully, through history In the opener, Ranajit Guha (re)considers 'The Small Voice of History': which is an evaluation of where, and how, the "small" voices could assume mythic proportions of authority, given a hearing. The aim again is to rescue the history of the ‘repressed’, and to give it autonomy; as Partha Chatterjee has argued, ‘to find, against the grand narrative of history itself, the cultural











12

5) Exposing Myths of elities elities history replacing replacing them with role role of Subalterns Subalterns

Postcolonial history, then, has at its heart a critique of nationalism and the nation-state. It seeks to uncovering the internal history of colonised peo ples, especially of ‘subalterns’ - those repressed within society, whose identity is imposed from outside by historians and other commentators. This means asserting the validity of other cultures, and assessing the extent to which European cultural models have determined identities and cultural norms in the nonEuropean world. The construction of knowledge - including science and the analysis of the natural world - are of crucial importance. 6) Exposing the exploitation exploitation and deceit of the ruling Classes

The economic-material exploitation on which the capitalist world runs tends tends to be left unexposed. Subaltern Studies is the great enabling project that it it is often considered to to be or is it a contingency and an index of the de-radicalisation of the Left not n ot only in Europe but also in privileged academic circles elsewhere. Nothing--not elite practices, state policies, academic disciplines, literary texts, archival sources, language--was exempt from the subaltern historiography.' Difference between Subaltern Studies and Marxist historiography









13

2) De-po De-polit litici iciza zatio tion n of Histo History ry

Marxist historians such as E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm, who also began to challenge old categories, did not depoliticize the writing of history or class analysis; the Subaltern Studies group, however, did do this. This fact is important, important, although obviously the Subaltern Subaltern school emerged as a voice for the oppressed in the concrete context of the Indian people's movements. Before pursuing this theme, however, let us e xamine the Subalternists' themes more carefully. 3) Subalternist criticism of Marx on the issue of representation of the People of colonized east

Spivak defends Marx's claim about the oppressed classes that Marx’s own idea that “the peoples of the east and particularly the peoples of India could not represent themselves but only be represented both historically historically and politically. While some of the subalternists subalternists have criticized criticized this comment for its elitism, Spivak cites the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (who authored the concept of the subaltern) in defending it. According to Gramsci, subaltern social groups are by definition disorganized, lacking in class consciousness, and entirely excluded from the histories of dominant and hegemonic classes of civil society. Any attempt on their part to become heard brings them into the domain of political and textual representation, which is to









14

Howard Zinn, the author of A Peoples History History of the United States, States, like subalternists subalternists attaches importance to the role of the people p eople in shaping both the past p ast , present and future. For him, there is nothing like pure fact and objectivity in history is impossible and undesireable. He considers himself and his work as the part of the history and for him the historian’s job lies in becoming the part of the history by taking sides of the downtrodden and the oppressed. The subalternists share most of his ideas, yet there are obvious differences. 1) Subalternists disagreement with Universality of History of working classes Dipesh Dipesh Chakra Chakrabar barty, ty, a leadin leading g Subalt Subaltern ern Studie Studiess spokes spokesman man,, recent recently ly expande expanded d the responsibility of Subaltern Studies to include "differences" as a tool for producing possibilities for action action.. Since Since the Subalt Subaltern ernis istt school school's 's projec projectt is to challe challenge nge old univer universal sal catego categorie ries, s, Chakrabarty thinks that by emphasizing "difference" it will be possible to remove the "problem of universality" in history. history. Yet Chakrabarty does not wish to to give up either Marx (let us recall that that Subalt Subaltern ern Studie Studiess initia initially lly was criti critical cal of Marxis Marxistt categor categories ies and kept a distan distance ce from from Marxism) or differences because he finds Marx's category of "real labor" useful in developing the idea of differences. differences. The goal of Subaltern Subaltern Studies, Studies, in his view is not to achieve political political









15

Sociol Sociologi ogists sts,, histor historian ians, s, econom economist ists, s, anthro anthropol pologi ogists sts,, and those those who combin combinee the methods methods of history and sociology sociology have made commentaries commentaries on the Subaltern Studies collective collective and on the monographs produced individually by some of its members. Mukhe Mukherj rjee ee crit critic icis ism m A well well-k -kno nown wn Indi Indian an soci sociol olog ogis istt and and hist histor oria ian n Ramk Ramkri rish shna na Mukherjee has chosen to criticize the writings writings of Ranjit Guha, the founder of Subaltern Subaltern Studies, because the unifying principles of the Subaltern School are found in Guha's Elementary Guha's Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983) . 1) Use of of categor categoriza ization tion of of peasant peasantss and large large span span of time time

Mukherjee's critique hits at the two major flaws in the assumptions of the founder of the Subaltern Studies: one, Guha's use of the concept of "peasant" not appropriate because it is devoid of real life variations variations among peasants and their their contemporaneo contemporaneous us social base. Thus this categor categoriza izatio tion n is a histor historica icall and on astruc astructur tural al basis. basis.

Two, Two, Guha Guha draws draws parallel parallelss among among

countries by the sweeping use of a large span of time (four hundred years) in history across the universe. 2) Flaw Flawed ed Metho Methodo dolog logy: y:

Mukher Mukherjee jee also also thinks thinks that that Guha's Guha's exclus exclusive ive cultur cultural al analys analysis is is based based on Weberi Weberian an









16

this stance that Dipesh Chakrabarty drives his conclusion that Sarkar stopped just short of calling him and Gautam Bhadra (a member of the Subaltern Studies editorial team) "fascist". Similarly, Chakrabarty reports that Tom Brass, and K. Balagopal, an Indian activist, have "expressed "expressed similar similar misgivings." misgivings." For Brass, "The real importance importance of postmodern postmodernism ism lies in its theoretical theoretical impact impact on political political practice; practice; it forbids socialism, socialism, encourages encourages bourgeois democracy democracy and allows allows fascis fascism." m." Balagopa Balagopall wrote wrote on the dangers dangers of neo-Hin neo-Hindui duism. sm.

As Chakrabar Chakrabarty ty

respond respondss by claimi claiming ng that that Balagop Balagopal al "blame "blamess 'postm 'postmode oderni rnists sts'' ' and 'subal 'subalter ternis nists' ts' ' allege alleged d rejection of the possibility of 'objective' analysis for the inadequacies of Left resistance to the fascistic Hindutva push". 4) Deviati Deviation on from from Gramsci Gramscian an Ideas Ideas

The Subaltern School represents a significant divergence from the Gramscian idea of the subalt subaltern ern because because,, for Grams Gramsci, ci, subalt subaltern ern groups groups by defini definitio tion n cannot cannot posses possesss autonom autonomy. y. Similarly, O' Hanlon writes that to portray "The figure of the subaltern as self-originating, self-determining, in possession of a sovereign sovereign consciousness. . . .is [in effect] to readmit through the back door the classic figure of Western Western humanism--the humanism--the rational human subject." subject." Mallon, Mallon, a Latin American historian, points out that "complicity, hierarchy and surveillance within subaltern commun communiti ities. es.

make make clear clear that no subalt subaltern ern identity identity can be pure pure

and transpa transparen rent, t, most











17

have become foci for subaltern enquiries." Similarly, Ortner states "The lack of an adequate sense of prior and ongoing politics among subalterns must inevitably contribute to an inadequate analysis of resistance itself." Dars Darshan han Pers Persuk, uk, howev however er,, goes goes beyo beyond nd a comm comment ent on the the impo import rtant ant issu issuee of the the Subalt Subaltern ernist ists' s' contra contradic dicti tions ons..

He writes, writes, "What seems seems to have littl littlee or no place place in this

[Subal [Subalter ternis nists ts'] '] histor historiog iograp raphy hy is the instit instituti utions ons and struct structure uress of power power and economi economicc exploitation which, in their very real and bloody exchanges with passive or insurgent masses, break bones and spirits equally effectively.. . .It is not enough for subaltern historians to prove, by recounting 'peoples' revolts,' that the oppressed have never liked being oppressed, or to show that, when they did not, their deviations from the rituals and symbols of the dominant culture









18

capitalist context. In their analysis, analysis, "colonialism [sometimes] appears as a force whose nature and implications do not have to be unpacked". Subalternists' refusal to consider class as a category in a colonial context frees frees the capitalist society society from the stigma stigma of "classness". In such a "classless" society, people's resistance can never be directed against capitalist or imperialist forces. In this way Subalternists can easily keep intact intact both the worlds, capitalism/ colonialism and resistance--while at the same time remaining "committed" to "people's history." 7) Ambi Ambigu guit itie iess

To begin with, Subaltern Studies used the term 'subaltern' to stand largely for the peasantry









19

In his seminal essay , 'On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India' (included India' (included in the book under review), Ranajit Guha speaks of "the failure of the Indian bourgeoisie to speak for the nation." Even a scholar like Guha, who is aware of o f this fact and more 'Marx-influenced' than some other Subalternists, commits the mistake of assuming (in this essay) that the bourgeoisie can speak for the 'nation'. The national bourgeoisie always fail always fail s to speak for the 'nation' (if the 'nation' is considered synonymous with the 'people') for it is always in the process of constituting the people into a nation in its own image. The bourgeoisie speaks the nation -- yes, even today, as one can see in the relationship supposedly 'free' American capital has to the US and vice versa. It is only when Capitalist hegemony has enab led the bourgeoisie to speak a particular nation that it starts appearing that the bourgeoisie of a particular country "speaks for" that









20

of sati as an example of this dynamic. In response to colonial British criticism of this practice and the threat of "white men saving brown women from brown men" - nationalist patriarchs argued variously that the widow actually wanted to die, that she attained a higher freedom (from the cycle of rebirth) through sati, and that she should be admired for the courage of her choice. The widow's own utterance on the matter was always interpreted according to the these two dominant narratives; she was either a victim of barbaric "brown men," or she was anti-national. She (as a subject in possession of her own agency) thus disappeared from public discourse. This disappearance, Spivak argues, is "not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the 'third-world woman' cau ght between tradition and modernization." ("Can the Subaltern Speak?") One of Spivak's most ethical gestures in this regard is to constantly point out the silencing of women's own narratives. In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" she writes about the 1926 suicide of a young Bengali woman, Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri. Bhaduri had been unable to carry out the









21

Sabaltern Studies in 10 volumes, illuminates the experiences and mentalities of ordinary peoples by drawing on an array of provocative and penetrating theoretical and conceptual frameworks. The Subaltern school is not entirely original in its theory and methods; it is an eclectic fusion of approaches and methodology derived from social history and social science along with a theoretical framework informed by the ideas of Gramsci and Marx. More systematically and imaginatively than almost anyone else in South Asian studies, the Subaltern school of writers has pursued recovery of the pasts of peoples who made history but did not write about their own experiences. However, in the course of their quest thus far, they have not no t defined precisely and rigorously the pa- rameters of the concept of subaltern. Instead, the term has been applied loosely

Subaltern School of Historiography

Recommend Documents