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THE CHALLENGE TO ORIENTALIST, ELITIST, WESTERN HISTORIOGRAPHY: NOTES ON "SUBALTERN PROJECT" 1982-1989 Kate Currie

AND THE

Kate Currie is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom.

The founding scholars of Subaltern Studies, like other modern academics, have been influenced by a diversity of intellectual concepts ranging from Hobsbawm's "social banditry, ''1 through E. P. Thompson's "unsung voices of history, "2 Genovese's "objects and subjects of history,'3 Banajrs "subsumption of labor by capital," 4 Said's "Orientalism, "5 Derrida's "deconstructionism," 6 Barthes' "structural analysis of narratives, "7 to Lacan's "other. ''8 Clearly, attempts to transcend Western historiography have not always implied the refutation of all products of Western thought. In this overview of Subaltern Studies from 1982-1989 I have singled out Gramsci and Foucault as the two most consistently significant and recurring influences, with Foucault gaining increasing sway in the later volumes. Of the others, the imprint of E. P. Thompson and Jacques Derrida is significant. Thompson, in his path-breaking study, The Making of the English Working Class, (1963), moved away from all forms of economism in favor of class agency, rejecting the notion of class as "structure" or "category" for "something which in fact happens in human relationships."9 Presaging the subaltern project, he also sought to represent the unsung voices of history. In so doing, he registered an awareness of "writing against the prevailing orthodoxies" which, through favoring elites, tended "to obscure the agency of working people, the degree to which they contributed, by conscious efforts, to the making of history." 10 For Thompson, and the subalternists, elitist historiography is flawed: "Only the successful are remembered. The blind alleys, the lost causes, and the losers themselves are forgotten. "11
Dialectical Anthropology 20: 219-246, 1995. 9 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Antonio Gramsci's notion of the "subalterno" provided the initial intellectual inspiration for the project, and this is acknowledged by Ranajit Guha in his Preface to the first volume (1982). The term is drawn from Gramsci's analysis of Italian history in Prison Notebooks (1971). 12 Gramsci's subtle and persuasive analysis of subaltern classes is elucidated in his explication of ruling class hegemony. When he argues that the historical unity of ruling classes is realized in the state, his point of reference is not merely the juridical and political state apparatus. For Gramsci, the fundamental unity results from the organic relations existing between state (or political society) and civil society. Subaltern groups are located within, and are both subject and party to this hegemonic rule. Their history is thus intertwined with that of civil society and the state, as is their lack of unity and inability to create an alternative "state." Consequently, the history of subaltern social groups is necessarily fragmented and episodic, since the tendency towards unification is continually interrupted by the activity of ruling groups. The argument is crisply articulated: "Subaltern groups are always subject to the activity of ruling groups even when they rebel and rise up: only 'permanent' victory breaks their subordination, and that not immediately." 13 To uncover and comprehend the political patterns and intricacies of subaltern group actions, Gramsci advocates the study of six dimensions of subaltern and dominant group behavior: i) the objective formation of subaltern social groups through changes in the productive sphere, and their genesis in pre-existing social groups whose "mentality and ideology and aims" they initially conserve; 2) their affiliation--active or passive--to the dominant political formations, and their efforts, in pursuit of subaltern interests, to influence the programs of dominant formations; 3) the emergence of new dominant group political organizations aimed at the conservation of subaltern assent, in the interest of continued subordination of subaltern groups; 4) the generation of subaltern formations for the articulation and attainment of "limited and partial" claims; 5) the emergence of new formations affirming the autonomy of subaltern groups within the established (old)

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framework; 6) formations which affirm the integral autonomy of subaltern groups within existing structures. Gramsci's perspective on the dynamic between state and civil society generates a subtle, multi-layered web of interrelationships between dominant and subordinate classes and groups in which calture, as an expression of civil society, permeates and influences the political behavior of both rulers and ruled. The second major influence on the subaltern group is Michel Foucault. In his own words, Foucault's main intellectual objective over a period of twenty years was to "create a history of the different modes by which human beings are made subjects. "14 The subject--and the constitution of subject--is the central theme of Foucault's work. Subjects are not constituted in abstraction or isolation; they are located within an intricate web of power relations in which the exercise of power entails the modification of certain actions by those exposed to that power. Unlike Hegel and Marx, Foucault rejected the quest for a general theory of history in which, for Marx, relationships of domination and subordination were integral. Foucault disaggregates the meaning of the term subject, 15 delineating the interrelated modes through which humans are transformed into subjects. The term subject thus depicts a. the subjection of an individual to the control and dependence of an "other," and b. the circumscription and constraint through which an individual is restricted by his or her own identity and by self-knowledge or conscience. Aspects of these two meanings are integrated into the modes of transformation or subject construction. Foucault identifies three such modes: 1. the objectivizing of the productive subject (incorporating disciplinary objectification through "scientific" classification e.g., the laboring subject in the analysis of wealth and economics); 2. the objectivizing of the subject through "dividing practices" (e.g., mad and sane; sick and healthy; sexual deviants and sexual conformists), enacted through binary structures and mechanisms of control; 3. the process of subjectification through which individuals transform themselves into subjects. For Foucault, the construction of knowledge and the exploration and pursuit of the subject proceeds through discursive analysis, the methodological alternative to the "progress" trajectory of Western thought. Throughout Foucault's narrative a continuous use of history

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is absent. He shows how discursive practices of, for example, "medicine," "psychiatry," and "economics," are constitutive of both knowledge and power. 16 And in his later work, in particular, in Discipline and Punish (1977) he focuses on the relationship between knowledge, power and the mechanisms of control and domination. 17 It is Foucault's contention that, while discourse is in principle limitless, societies regulate the boundaries with practices of containment in which the right to speak is restricted to "experts" i.e., guardians of knowledge. This is the way in which discourse is "managed," the boundaries are "policed" and a whole "teratology" 18 of knowledge is excluded. As the subalternists have noted, this management of discourse restricts access to the past and structures narratives of that past. 19 Although Foucault does consider forms of struggle (delineating three main types: struggles against domination, struggles against exploitation, and struggles against subjection), 2~ the dominant overall impression, is that of people being subjected to insurmountable systems of power (e.g., prisons, courts, asylums, schools, armies etc). By focusing on structures of power and the methods of human objectification Foucault privileges the powerful at the expense of real instances of practice. 21 This contrasts with Gramsci's focus on hegemony--an unstable balance built upon dynamic alliances and the consent of subordinate groups--which creates a conceptual "space" for struggle which is absent in Foucault's theoretical frame. Jacques Derrida is infamous for the statement "1l n'y a pas d'hors texte ''22 ("There is nothing outside of the text"). What this seems to imply is that all knowledge is mediated and, from Derrida's stance, even Foucault is unable to transcend the terms of the Western metaphysical tradition that contextualizes his thinking. Derrida's aim is to deconstruct narratives within Western philosophical culture which, through their claims to a universal language, have represented the world in an unproblematic, universalizing way. The task of deconstruction is the revelation of the "false dream at work. ,23 The central notion in Derrida's analysis is the "text" or "general textuality" of the world. This does not imply that the world is simply a linguistic object, but a texture of traces which can be exposed through deconstruction. Within Derrida's conceptual apparatus there

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are no instances of absolute truth only "diff6rance" in which everything is only as it differs from something else. Ryan has suggested that Derrida's critique of Marx gradually softened, and that he came to believe that Marx was trying to expose the mythical foundations of capitalist domination. 24 He reads radical political implications in Derrida's notion of deconstruction, convinced that it can be articulated with critical Marxism. 25 Starting from the premise that Derrida and Marx are both critics of metaphysics, Ryan suggests that deconstructive writing of the dialectic could eliminate the model of evolutionary progression to socialism. Deconstructionism could also indicate the direction necessary for a radical critique of capitalistpatriarchal institutions and "provide an insight into the way the social world is constructed by an intellectual technology underwritten by the principles of Western rationality.'26 This is an ambitious proposal and, while the scope for critique through deconstructionism is evident, the notion of "diff6rance," however, does not seem to facilitate the revelation of power inequalities.

Guha"s Agenda:

To simplify my discussion of the six volumes of Subaltern Studies from 1982-1989, I shall consider the volumes in two groups of three. This is not merely a chronological device. The influence of Gramsci on the group is most explicitly evident in the first three volumes (e.g., R. Guha, 1982; 27 S. Henningham, 1983; 28 D. Chakrabarty 29 and P. Chatterjee, 1984). 30 The Foucault/Derrida influence emerges in 1983 with the essays of Chakrabarty 31 and Chatterjee, 32 and pervades the subsequent volumes. Over the decade during which the six volumes were published, there emerged amongst contributors a growing sensitivity and awareness of gender issues. The first article which systematically addresses gender issues appeared in 1984. 33 The first contribution by a woman appeared in 1985. 34 In the Preface to volume I, Ranajit Guha sets the agenda for the series. The stated aim is "to promote a systematic and informed discussion of subaltern themes in the field of South Asian studies" (1982, vii) thereby helping "to rectify the elitist bias characteristic of

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much research and academic work in this particular area" (vii). The term "subaltern," which Guha equates with "of inferior rank," is deployed as a nomenclature for the general attribute of subordination whether expressed in "terms of class, caste, age, gender and office or in any other way" (vii). Following Gramsci's "Notes on Italian History," subordination is viewed as a constitutive element in a binary relationship in which the other constitutive element is dominance, hence, "subaltern groups are always subject to the activity of ruling groups, even when they rebel and rise up. ,, 35 Two things are clear from Guha's Preface. First, the project is constituted as a challenge to elitist historiography. Secondly, the broad, all encompassing definition of subaltern implies a shift away from the centrality of labor in general, and the proletariat in particular, within unreconstructed classical Marxism. A closer perusal of the contents of the first three volumes reveals a narrower focus in which the majority of contributions consider aspects of agrarian subalternity, workers being the subject of only three essays (Chakrabarty, Vol. II, 1983, Vol. III 1984; Pandey, Vol. III, 1984). 36 Guha's opening contribution ("On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India," 1982) pursues the critique of elitist historiography in both colonial and bourgeois nationalist variants. Both variants privilege the elite (British in one instance, Indian in the other) in the emergence of the Indian nation. From the neo-colonialist perspective, nationalism is the outcome of an Indian elite's response to the institutions and opportunities, generated by colonialism, through which this elite could attain a share in the wealth, power and prestige created by colonial rule. The second variant, in which the indigenous elite alone are assumed to have inspired and led the people to freedom is, in Guha's depiction, romanticist and idealist. While elitist historiography is useful in charting the contradictions between the two elites (colonial and national), and uncovering aspects of elite ideology as dominant ideology, it fails either to acknowledge or interpret the contribution made directly by the people, and independently of the elite. Within elite historiography popular nationalist action is either assessed negatively, as a law and order problem, 37 or, positively, as a response to initiatives of charismatic leaders or the manipulation of factions. What is absent is any "politics of the people," any

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autonomous domain, and any analysis of the processes of horizontal mobilization. Here, for Guha, in the absence of a politically conscious working class, the model of peasant insurgency is paramountly important. Guha's critique of the inadequacy of elite historiography in explaining popular initiatives asserted during nationalist campaigns, as in the 1942 Quit India Movement, is a theme taken up by Stephen Henningham in "Quit India in Bihar and the Eastern United Provinces: The Dual Revolt" (Vol. II, 1983). Henningham analyzes the revolt that swept India following the shut down of national Congress offices and the arrest of leaders in August 1942. Henningham identifies two interacting insurgencies: an elite nationalist uprising (composed of high caste rich peasants and small landlords, i.e., dominant Congress classes), and a subaltern rebellion of the low caste and poor. For poor peasants and laborers, two years of rising prices, indebtedness and general privation was expressed in an increased crime rate. Strategically, Japan's entry into the war (December 1941) undermined the British position in Asia, thereby generating a context favorable to a mass civil disobedience campaign led by Congress. With the clampdown on Congress, students and workers initiated demonstrations in Bihar, and poor peasants and laborers looted grain stores. While the revolt gained initial successes, the inherent limitation of the challenge to the colonial state expressed the dual nature of the revolt. On the one hand, the elite nationalist uprising was a protest against colonial repression of Congress and a demand for independence. On the other hand, the subaltern rebellion was directed at those targets associated by subalterns with their miserable conditions of existence. The duality of the insurrection which created the impetus for activity on the part of a broad spectrum of society was also the basis for the political incoherence which, in the face of massive repression, led to defeat. 38 In a provocative essay, "The Indian 'Faction': a Political Theory Examined" (Vol. I 1982), 39 David Hardiman argues that political sociology of India fails to break with the elitist (Orientalist) view 4~ in which class conflict is reduced to factionalism. The thesis advanced by Paul Brass (1965) 41 is illustrative of this perspective. In a study of the Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh, Brass defines class conflict as "factional," arguing that factions are bound together by ties between

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master and disciple. This view, by reducing conflict to a single axis, i.e., master-disciple (guru-disciple) relationship, simultaneously denies the subaltern power and precludes the analysis of apparent class collaboration. In the structural-functionalist account of Brass, "factions" contribute to system-maintenance by providing an outlet for social conflict. Brass' analysis, in Hardiman's exposition, is locked in a form of "Orientalist psychologizing" in which the faction leader is depicted as both an Oriental mystic (the "guru" figure) and a "potentate" (an Oriental despot). Within this elite centered model, in which factionalism is equated with Indian politics in a transitional stage in the growth of democracy, the dynamic of class solidarity and class collaboration are denied. Partha Chatterjee's two essays (Vol. I, 1982, 42 Vol. II, 198343) on modes of political power--delineating communal, feudal and bourgeois forms--closely follow Marx on modes of production. In "Agrarian Relations and Communalism, 1926-35" (1982), Chatterjee raises issues in relation to the political conditions in which community and class emerge as ideological elements in the politics of the peasantry. In his analysis, based on Bengal, peasant-communal politics is linked to the process of differentiation within the peasantry, a process entailing the break-down of peasant communities, and usually accompanied by bad harvests, droughts and famines. Under conditions of adversity, in which a few gain at the expense of many, peasant communities rise against the state and perceived "outside" exploiters. However, in Chatterjee's analysis, as the resilient "peasant-communal ideology" is an impediment to the identification of "inside" exploiters and the community based agents of the "external" state apparatus, the emergence and spread of class awareness is limited. His second article on "More on Modes of Power and the Peasantry" (1983), is a comparative analysis in which the modes of power now imbued with a Foucauldian aura, constitute an analytic framework for a wide ranging discussion of the exercise of power over agrarian communities in Europe, Asia and Africa at different spatial and temporal junctures. Arvind N. Das also focuses on differentiation, and peasant resistance to the process of disintegration of traditional economies under British colonial rule. His emphasis, however, in "Agrarian Change from Above and Below: Bihar 1947-78" (Vol. II, 1983), 44 is on the growth

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of the Bihar peasant movement (Kisan Sabha) and the relationship between that movement and the nationalist movement. Das uncovers processes of change from above and below in order to demonstrate that agrarian change cannot be understood exclusively in terms of elitesponsored land reform since, over the period under review, peasants were involved in both organized movements and sporadic agrarian agitation against landowning classes. David Arnold in "Rebellious Hillmen: The Gudem-Ramp Risings 1839-1924" (Vol.I, 1982), 45 and Gautam Bhadra "Two Frontier Uprisings in Mughal India" (Vol. II, 1983), 46 feature the protests of marginal groups against perceived oppression. In the case of the Hathikheda (capture of elephants) uprising of 1621, peasants in the North East frontier revolted against the oppressive agents of the Mughal state. Briefly, locals were expected to help capture elephants for the army. The capture of elephants was disruptive and interfered with agricultural work. The escape of elephants and subsequent death sentence imposed on drivers by Mughal officials ignited a revolt in which the soldiers were killed, the elephants confiscated, and the Headman of the elephant drivers proclaimed King. The episode, which was limited and quickly suppressed, is of interest in exposing the weakness of the Mughals in peripheral zones which were tenuously integrated within the state structure. Arnold's essay, featuring inhabitants of hill tracts near the Godavri River in Andhra Pradesh is, in part, a critique of that conventional brand of academic wisdom which highlights the fatalism, passivity, and resignation of the people in the face of oppression. This assumption obscures the alternative picture of peasant activism in which peasants throw off the superimposed stereotype of passive victim. Arnold, like Chatterjee and Das, explores subaltern responses to the erosion of traditional economy and society. In the hill tracts, both elite and subaltern were threatened by outsiders and, while the elite were prominent in the leadership of risings, pressure sometimes came from below. This was marked in the Rampa rebellion of 1879-80. Reaction was expressed in two main ways: through a religious idiom which provided a framework for solidarity against outsiders; through crimeas-protest in Hobsbawm's sense of "social banditry." Arnold, drawing in his analysis of Hobsbawm's Bandits, distinguishes between those

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bandits perceived by peasants and lords as criminals, and those bandits, though criminals in the eyes of the law, perceived by peasants as heroes or freedom fighters. This second category of banditry was widespread amongst the hill people for whom an individual crime could be interpreted "as a gesture of defiance against all outsiders and oppressors. "47 Attempts by outsiders to transform the risings into broader struggles for national liberation were impeded by the insiders' strong sense of territoriality and community identity. Arnold returns to the familiar theme in which peasants have been portrayed as powerless and passive victims of circumstances beyond their control, in his essay "Famine in Peasant Consciousness and Peasant Action: Madras 1876-78" (Vol. III, 1984). In this article, the crisis of famine provides the author with "a window onto subaltern consciousness and action. ''48 What emerges is the transformation of consciousness, under the impact of famine, from solidarity to fragmentation. With the impending disaster, rain-making ceremonies both symbolized and reinforced village solidarity. 49 As fear and experience of famine increased, village solidarity fractured, exposing the divergent interests of the collectivity. This reveals the weakness of the "moral economy" thesis in which, during times of hardship, it is assumed that rural "patrons," in so far as they are able, are morally obligated to support their "clients." As Arnold argues, the notion of reciprocity is meaningless where the relationship between groups is founded on inequality. Certainly, inequality structured the relationships between landlords and peasant proprietors on the one hand and poor peasants and laborers on the other. These were relationships not of reciprocity but of power. Hence, the famine crisis exacerbated a division between peasant proprietors and laborers that reflected their respective class interests. This division was manifested, during times of famine, in class based action (e.g., moneylenders withdrew credit; peasants conserved grain for family use; traders raised prices or hoarded grain; laborers, including women, looted grain stores etc.) 5~ which, at the height of the crisis, gave way to individual desperation. The action of subalterns, however, did not constitute a threat to the status quo. Under normal conditions the structured inequality of village power relations was rarely questioned. In the face of a subsistence crisis, in which superordinates ignored subaltern needs, subalterns

229 engaged in seemingly challenging actions which, in effect, were pleas to restore the status quo. At a structural level, famine reinforced peasant subordination "to the moneylender, the trader, the landholder and the state."51 A significantly different theoretical perspective on peasant subordination is explicated in Shahid Amin's essay on "Small Peasant Commodity Production and Rural Indebtedness: the Culture of Sugar cane in Eastern U.P., c. 1880-1920" (Vol. I, 1982). 52 In this study, the author focuses on a detailed analysis of sugar production, which is theoretically contextualized within Marx' discussion of production in Capital (volume II) and Jairus Banaji's derivative analysis of "the formal subsumption of labor by capital" in which, as an instance, the cyclical reproduction of peasant households is dependent on advances from "monied capitalists.'53 Consequently, following the logic of the theoretical framework, in the context of the form of enterprise (peasant household) and the labor process (small-scale production), monied capitalists extract surplus value as interest from peasant producers. Evidently, both Arnold and Amin identify peasant subordination to money-lending capital as an integral part of the overall process through which peasant subalternity is reinforced. For Amin, however, the explanations of this condition are conceptually framed through Marxist categories of analysis. Guha's essay "The Prose of Counter-Insurgency" (Vol. II, 1983), 54 is the first essay in the series in which a formal structuralist approach to analysis is explicit. In refuting the "spontaneity" view of peasant risings, Guha engages in an exploration of historical writings on insurgency in colonial India which is structured through the delineation of three distinct types of discourse: primary, secondary, tertiary. Each type is differentiated from the other two in terms of formal identification with an official (colonial) standpoint and proximity to the event it seeks to describe. Guha's technically complex exposition of the three levels of discourse is inspired by the work of Roland Barthes (especially Images-Music-Text, 1977) 55 on discursive narratives. The rationale of the article is to expose, through textual analysis, the shortcomings of the three forms of discourse in relation to the revelation of insurgent political consciousness. What is lost from the three narrative forms is the presence of the speaker. The rebel is

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"appropriated," in different ways in each narrative form, and this appropriation is a denial of the rebel as "conscious subject of his [sic] own history," and affirms the rebel as "a contingent element in another history with another subject.'56 At each level, Guha is critical of the mediation of insurgent consciousness by officials (primary discourse), colonial historians (secondary discourse), and liberal nationalist historians (tertiary discourse). For Guha, the problem in radical tertiary discourse is that the prioritization of the agenda of class struggle and class solidarity denies the religious element in rebel consciousness, and the contradictions which may engender betrayal, territoriality and retreat. So what is Guha's solution to the problem? Basically, he seems to suggest a narrowing of the gap between the expressions of past consciousness and the historian's perception of those expressions. This seems to be precisely what much contemporary writing on peasant political action is about and, perhaps, the future is not as bleak as he surmises. Dipesh Chakrabarty is one of the few contributors to the first three volumes who actually looks at the position of a section of the working class. The two articles focus on Calcuttan jute workers between 1890 and 1950. The first article, "Conditions for Knowledge of WorkingClass Conditions: Employers, Government and the Jute Workers of Calcutta, 1890-1940" (Vol. II, 1983), draws upon Marx and Foucault in order to conceptualize the nature of the workers' subordination to the capitalist system of production. Chakrabarty's analysis is informed by Marx' Capital I discussion, based on factory inspectors' reports on mechanisms for regulating the working day. For Marx, the capitalist division of labor produced continuity, uniformity, regularity and order, i.e., the capitalist division of labor produced discipline. Discipline in Marx' analysis had two components: the technical subordination of the worker to the instruments of labor; and supervision, which embodied the authority of capital. For Chakrabarty, the Marxian idea of supervision is reproduced in Foucault 57 in the guise of surveillance in which capitalism forms "a body of knowledge" about its subjects. Chakrabarty, in attempting to construct a history of the conditions of the jute mill workers on the basis of documents emanating from the state and the owners of capital (i.e., Guha's "primary" discourse), is aware of the limitations inherent in the sources of his knowledge and

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accepts that the history produced both knowledge and gaps. His aim, however, is to demonstrate that the migrant peasant jute workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were pre-capitalist workers who lacked an active presence in the process of production. Unlike the workers of Marx, or Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, these mill workers had not internalized the formal freedom of the contract or the notion of equality before the law. The Government of Bengal, in its eagerness to avoid confrontation with the jute mill owners, excluded controversial matters from reports. Consequently, the labor conditions in jute mills never became the object of knowledge since the industry failed to produce documentation, and the government failed to carry out investigations. The history is thus "a history both of our knowledge and of our ignorance. "58 Throughout the period the Government of Bengal desisted the Government of India's pursuit of knowledge about labor conditions in the higher interests of owners of capital. The "optical errors" of mill owners were reproduced in the documents of the Bengal Government. The workers' subordination to the machine was not mediated through technical knowledge but rather "mediated through the north Indian peasant's conception of his tools, where the tools took on magical and godly qualities.'59 Where religion mediated the relationship between worker and powerful tools, the results were not always felicitous. Jute production in Calcutta was based on a political economy in which an abundance of cheap available labor militated against the incentive for a healthy, efficient, literate working class. These conditions, imbued with a rural peasant consciousness, created the ethos in which factory documents were constructed and generated the gaps in the creation of knowledge on labor conditions. Chakrabarty's second essay "Trade Unions in a Hierarchical Culture: The Jute Workers of Calcutta 1920-50" (Vol. III, 1984), which draws upon Gramsci, Foucault and Raymond Williams, 6~ is an analysis of the interplay between "outsiders" and workers in the emergence of union organizations. For Chakrabarty, the "strong militancy" (expressed in the two general strikes of 1929 and 1937) and "weak organization" is inexplicable in terms of the absence of political education. The real problem operated at the level of representation. At that level, while the Bengali left were committed to developing trade

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unions based on democratic, contractual and voluntary organizational procedures, culturally, they "related to the coolies through a hierarchy of status "61 in which their speech, appearance, education served to reinforce their superiority over the workers in a milieu in which ideology "was not enough to ease the ties of power encoded in the culture. ,,62 Ultimately, in Chakrabarty's analysis, the paradox of the history of the jute workers' organization was located at the intersection of ideology (a body of conscious ideas) and culture (defined by Williams as the "signifying system") through which a social system is "communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored. ,63 Gyanendra Pandey's "Encounters and Calamities: The History of a North Indian Qasba in the Nineteenth Century" (Vol. III, 1984), also explores the gap in colonial historiography by highlighting the differences in perspective between British official records and the documents produced by the Muslim weavers of Mubarakpur, U.P., in relations to "violence" perpetuated against the dominant groups of the Qasba. My final selection from the first three volumes is Partha Chatterjee's Gramscian influenced essay on "Gandhi and the Critique of Civil Society" (Vol. III, 1984). In this essay, Chatterjee argues that Gandhi's nationalism was anchored in a critique of civil society. Gandhi's rejection of modernity separated him from mainstream nationalist thought. For Gandhi, nationalism and politics were approached through the science of non-violence. In Chatterjee's interpretation, ironically, this approach also carried its own Orientalist baggage since, in attempting to justify non-violent nationalist thought, Gandhi sometimes resorted to an Orientalist essentialism in which he contrasted the inherently peaceful disposition of Indians, with the warlike disposition of the Turks. The contributors to the first three volumes of the Subaltern Studies series inveigh against an elitist colonial and nationalist historiography which denies subordinate groups a role as subjects of history. Ideologically, the subalternists are empathetically disposed towards the plight and aspirations of those whom they identify as subalterns, 64 i.e., those subject to the authority of colonial administrators, planters, missionaries, indigenous feudal groups, landholders, merchants, and bureaucrats. In the main, the contributors seem in greater harmony

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with agrarian than urban struggles, and it is noteworthy that volume I does not include a single essay on urban labor. From the outset, and this is certainly evidenced in the first three volumes, the contributors are indebted to a diversity of intellectual influences (e.g., Marx, Gramsci, Thompson, Hobsbawm, Genovese, Banaji, Said, Derrida, Barthes, Foucault, Williams), and these myriad influences are reflected in a variety of intellectual modes of expression. The outcome is not a collection of essays in which Gramsci's analytically complex exposition of the "subalterno" is systematically pursued and applied within the Indian context. Neither, of course, was this the explicit intention of the editor. Gramsci's analysis, however, did provide a loose intellectual framework which set the parameters for the substantive content. At this level, then, there is an underlying intellectual consensus. There is a restoration of the historiographical balance which, in line with the editor's aims, resulted in the production of an informed, if not systematic, discussion of subaltern themes. Arnold has closely examined the influence of Gramsci in relations to the application of concepts. 65 Certainly, as Arnold suggests, elements of Gramscian thought on subalternity are diffused within the early volumes. As we have seen, Gramsci emphasized the importance of understanding the conditions and aspirations of subaltern groups. He was interested in the dialectic between rulers and ruled in which the ruled share in their own oppression (instanced, for example, in Arnold, Vol. III, 1984; Chakrabarty, Vol. II, 1983). He was interested in the disunity, sporadic and fragmentary nature of subaltern action in which the absence of a collective consciousness impeded sustained forms of struggle (instanced in Chatterjee, Vol. I, 1982; Arnold, Vol. I, 1982; Das, Vol. II, 1983; Chakrabarty, Vol. III, 1984). He acknowledged the origins of subaltern groups in pre-existing social groups whose ideology impacts upon the present (instanced in Chatterjee, Vol. I, 1982; Arnold, Vol. I 1982; Chakrabarty, Vol. II 1983; Chakrabarty, Vol. III 1984). Finally, Gramsci foreshadowed the subalternists in his conviction that while archival material is often difficult to locate, "Every trace of independent initiative on the part of subaltern groups" is "of incalculable value for the integral historian.-66 This conviction is not endorsed by Washbrook. For him, the subalternists have not only abandoned materialist analysis for cultural analysis but, like the

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ethnohistorians, "have also given up the main streets of Indian history for its alleyways, pursuing failed tribal revolts, spontaneous grain riots and movements of sectarian dissent, wherever they lead, which was usually to an early grave. ,,67 Washbrook's critique, at least in relation to the first three volumes, is harsh a n d predicated on a materialist/culturalist dichotomy which is absent in both Gramsci and many of the essays which address the interplay between the material and cultural, and the mediation of action through popular beliefs. What he does detect, however, are the indications of a shift away from "foundational" categories (specifically, categories within political economy) in favor of cultural constructions of discourse (e.g., Guha: Vol. II 1983). Here, P. Robb's critical observation that the subalternists have inconsistently abandoned stereotypes has some validity, 68 especially in relation to their penchant for an undifferentiated category of Indian peasant. Both Arnold and Robb emphasize the portrayal of subaltern class autonomy in the Subaltern Studies project. As Arnold indicates, this derives from Guha's reference to "an autonomous domain" (introduction to volume I) which Arnold contrasts with the Gramscian view wherein subalterns are depicted as always subject to the authority of ruling groups, even in rebellion. The two positions are possibly closer than Arnold initially suggests. Both Gramsci and Guha (Preface, 1982) acknowledge the binary relationship between classes in dominance and classes in subordination and the independent initiatives which subaltern groups can and have taken. They both (Introduction, Vol. I, 1982), acknowledge the shortcomings of subaltern politics which, in the absence of an alliance between workers and peasants, as in India under colonialism, remained localized and fragmented. For Arnold, the Gramscian view that subaltern culture is derived from the elite, and operates as an ideological agency of peasant subordination, is overstated in relation to India. This view is countered in the various contributions to the project which show that, while subaltern classes under colonialism were subordinated in varying degrees to foreign and indigenous elites, their degree of independence was greater than is widely assumed. Nonetheless, as Asok Sen astutely observes, 69 questions of autonomy and spontaneity of subaltern insurgency are connected with forms and processes of historical transition. Hence,

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such questions are not inherent to the methodology of the subaltern project, but are integral to subaltern groups in their struggles against pre-capitalist and capitalist exploitation. In the course of the three volumes of Subaltern Studies published between 1985 and 1989 the shift from "foundational" categories to textual reconstruction accelerates. Increasingly, the essays are informed by Foucauldian and Derridian analysis. The contributions to the transitional Volume IV (1985) are a somewhat disparate collection. Bernard Cohn's analysis of "The Command of Language and the Language of Command "7~ traces the changes in forms of knowledge which occurred under colonial rule illustrating how, through the production of texts, colonial rulers created a "discursive formation" (Orientalism) through which Indian forms of knowledge were converted into European objects. In this process, territorial invasion precipitated the invasion of an "epistemological space." David Arnold is also concerned with colonial discourse. In his essay on "Bureaucratic Recruitment and Subordination in Colonial India: The Madras Constabulary 1859-1947,"71 he uncovers the ambiguity in the subaltern status of a group of low-paid workers who, in their role of servants of the colonial state and indigenous elites, shared the material conditions but not the immediate interests of other subaltern groups. The police were exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed, both agents and objects of colonial discourse. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the first woman to contribute to the series, appraises the subalternists" search for a "theory of consciousness of culture, "72 advocating a deconstructionist approach. She endorses the groups "scrupulous" consideration towards women, which I find, however, to be episodic and schematic. The prevailing drift towards discursive and deconstructionist modes of analysis is not, however, total. In his article, "In Search of a Subaltern Lenin" (Vol. V, 1987), 73 Ajit Chaudhury tentatively suggests that the single category of "subaltern" masks the differences between worker and peasant in objective location and structure of rebellion. This seems to me to be problematic only if the category of subaltern remains undifferentiated. This was not Gramsci's intention nor is it the intention of the project. As Edward Said indicates, 74 Gramsci unveiled how history is structured through the interplay of

236 ruler and ruled. The subalternists have attempted, largely through the reconstruction of documentary sources, to unveil the role of subaltern classes in the making of Indian history. The project is "an attempt to, wrest control Of the Indian past from its scribes and curators" and as such is "part of a vast post-colonial cultural and critical effort. ,75 Subaltern history is an uncovered narrative absent from the official accounts of India. Yet, it is a history inextricably caught within a context in which it is interdependent with the history of dominant classes, consequently, subaltern history is never a simple alternative to the historiography which it challenges. This is illustrated by Partha Chatterjee's analysis of "Caste and Subaltern Consciousness" (Vol. VI, 1989), 76 in which the author examines "minor religious sects" of Bengal between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries in order to disentangle the threads through which elite and subordinate group conceptions of the world are interlinked. Following Gramsci for whom Catholicism, despite a surface unity, was in reality a multiplicity of distinct and contradictory religions in which "there is one Catholicism for the peasants, one for the petit bourgeoisie and town workers, one for women, and one for the intellectuals which is itself variegated and disconnected,'77 Chatterjee views religion in class-divided societies as the ideological unity of two opposed tendencies: one autonomous (emanating from the subaltern groups) and one borrowed (emanating from the elite). The interplay between dominance and subordination is a theme also taken up by Ranajit Guha in his modified Gramscian framework of "Dominance Without Hegemony and its Historiography" (Vol. VI, 1989). 7s Within this analysis, which is assiduously developed in relation to pre-colonial and colonial history, domination (determined and constituted by a pair of interacting elements, coercion and persuasion) and subordination (determined and constituted by collaboration and resistance) give power its substance and form. Within this matrix, Guha examines the interplay between the Hindu and secular political idioms in which persuasion was manifested through the colonial idiom of improvement (attempts to relate nonantagonistically to the ruled via Western style education, literature, social reform, missionaries etc) and the Hindu idiom of dharma or ethical duty.

237

Gyanendra Pandey is also interested in the colonial construction of knowledge and in "The Colonial Construction of 'Communalism': British Writings on Banaras in the Nineteenth Century" (Vol. VI, 1989), 79 he argues that colonial perceptions of communalism were anchored in Orientalist constructions of knowledge in which certain communities, e.g., Rajputs and Muslims, were imbued with predilections for fighting and rioting; and popular politics was viewed as a problem of law and order to be countered and resolved by the state. With the exception of David Hardiman's sturdy empirical study, "The Bhils and the Shahukars of Eastern Gujarat" (Vol. IV, 1987), 8~ the contributions to volumes V and VI, in varying degrees, deploy Foucauldian discourse analysis and Derridian deconstructionism. One of the most interesting and least opaque of these articles is Arnold's "Touching the Body: Perspectives on the Indian Plague, 1896-1900" (Vol. V, 1987). 81 In this analysis, the plague dramatizes the body of the colonized "as a site of conflict between colonial power and indigenous politics" which was exposed to both the "gaze" of Western medicine and its (polluting) physical touch. Drawing on the Foucauldian analogy between prison and hospital, Arnold contrasts the colonial perception of the segregated, sanitized and healing environment of the hospital with the indigenous perception of "a place of pollution, contaminated by blood and faeces, inimical to caste, religion and purdah. ''82 The initial hostility against the plague administration (e.g., nearly 1,000 mill-hands attacked Bombay's Arthur Rd hospital in October 1896 following the removal to the hospital of a woman worker suspected of carrying the plague) was, as Arnolds claims, illustrative of the "practical limitations" to power and "the extent to which regulatory systems tend to be less absolute, less one-dimensional ''83 than Foucault is inclined to assume. R. Guha's "Chandra's Death"84 and Shahid Amin, "Approver's Testimony, Judicial Discourse: The Case of Chauri Chaura "85 (Vol. V, 1987) approach specific events (in the first instance, the death of a woman due to the termination of a pregnancy; in the second, the study of the 1922 riot in the market town of Chaura) through analysis of the construction of documentary narratives. In so doing they follow a technique inspired by Foucault's I, Pierre Rividre, 86 an official

238

investigation into what is presumed to be a murder, and Discipline and Punish (1977). An added interest in "Chandra's Death" is its illustrative value in depicting patriarchal assertion over the female subject(s). It was Chandra's lover who demanded the termination while her sister, inadvertently, brought about the death. With the notable exception of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the contributors to the first five volumes are all male. Spivak, in "A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: Mahasweta Devi's "Stanadayani'" (Vol. V, 1987) 87 a heady theoretical pot pourri encompassing Foucault, Derrida, Bathes, Lacan, Marx, Gramsci, and many others, engages in a reconstructionist literary representation of a work, "Standayini" ("Breast Giver"), written by the Bengal woman writer Mahasweta Devi. "Stanadayini" is a poignant account of Jashoda the "professional mother," who, having succored some fifty children, dies of breast cancer. In Devi's own interpretation of the story, "Stanadayini" is a parable of decolonized India, an allegory of India exploited and abused by the very classes sworn to protect her. In Spivak's rendition, Jashoda is the subaltern constituted as gendered subject. In this reconstructed account a dense post-modernist analysis is interpolated by the Marxist distinction between use-value/exchange value (the milk produced for one's own children/the milk produced for exchange) and necessary labor/surplus labor (production for one's own children/production for children of master's family). Here, the plea from Spivak is that "Marxism and feminism must become persistent interruptions of each other. "88 The Vol. VI, 1989 essays by Sumit Sarkar ("The Kalki-Avatar of Bikrampur: A Village Scandal in Early Twentieth Century Bengal") 89 and Gautam Bhadra ("The Mentality of Subalternity: Kantanama or Rajdharma") 9~ both draw upon the methods of textual analysis. Sarkar's Foucauldian exposition of perceptions of madness and multilayered meanings derives from his interpretation of seventy five pages of court proceedings (including depositions of accused and evidence from witnesses) on the events of Doyhata village (Dacca district), December 1904. The murder of one untouchable disciple (of a visiting Sadhu) by another, and the consequential infringement of caste norms (including the sexual humiliation and infringement of the modesty of a bhadralok's wife), manifests the appropriation, by

239 subalterns, of parts of the myth of both Brahmin sadhu and bhadralok (middle class person). Gautam Bhadra deploys Foucauldian and Derridian analysis in his interpretation of a mid nineteenth century poem by a village headman about the local zamindars. While the poem is supplicatory, according to Bhadra, it expresses its own "moments of irony, fear, resistance and resentment, "91 thus displaying the inextricable linkages between the idioms of domination, subordination and revolt. Julie Stephens "Feminist Fictions: A Critique of the Category 'NonWestern Women' in Feminist Writings on India ''92 (Vol. VI, 1989)--in full deconstructionist mode--is at great pains to demonstrate that feminism collides and colludes with the discourse of Orientalism. Both nationalist (exemplified by M. Kishwar and P. Vanita, 1984) 93 and non-nationalist (exemplified by Gail Omvedt) 94 variants are singled out for attack. Both sets of authors are accused of stereotyping the women whose voices they seek to represent. The nationalists, by portraying and endorsing a mythic idealized view of "Indian womanhood"; and the non-nationalist by drawing a picture of the militant, tribal activist breaking through police lines. Stephens claims that both approaches, via "direct speech," are structured to conform to a "true feminist consciousness." Indian women, elite and subaltern, have become objects of feminists' gaze, and feminists are "blind to their own image making." Strangely, Stephens fails to discuss gender issues in relation to the Subaltern Studies project itself. This might have been an illuminating exercise. In spite of Spivak's endorsement (Vol. IV, 1985), on the basis of the substantive contributions to the first four volumes, it is difficult to see how gender issues are focal to the overall project. In part, this is a consequence of method. As C. A. Bayly has observed, 95 the subalternists have not made much use of oral history to supplement their reconstitutionist analyses of colonial documentation, and this may account for the paucity of gender specific contributions. Three targets of subalternist criticism were identified by Guha (Vol. II, 1982, and Vol. III, 1983) as colonial, national, and radical (Marxist) 96 historiography. The colonial and national discourses, albeit from different persPectives, are viewed as elitist. While the (classical) Marxist discourse is explicitly evolutionary in assuming a process of

240 linear development ultimately culminating in the glorious proletarian revolution. There is a certain sense in which the classical Marxist discourse, as a product of post-Enlightenment European thought in which there is scant theoretical space for the location of peasants, nomadic and tribal peasantries is similarly elitist. 97 In critiquing the three discourses, the subalternists have attempted to recover a "history from below" which unveils the actions of the hitherto silent masses. Under the subalternists' gaze, their actions are not reduced to the mere level of law and order problems. The subalternists' quest, shared with the feminist project, was the recovery of lost experiences and absent voices. 98 The critique of colonial, national, and Marxist historiography is also, of course, a critique of modernity. It is a critique of the modernist (industrial) vision. There is little concern, evidenced in the substantive contributions, for the mode of production, the transition to capitalism, and the conditions of the industrial proletariat. Nor do the inhabitants of squatter settlements and shanty towns feature in the project. The objective of making subaltern classes the subject of their own history was no longer central by the second Calcutta conference (1986), and the tenuous intellectual coherence of the project had slipped away. 99 Subaltern groups--manifested as classes and castes--had been abandoned for deconstructionism and reconstituted subjects. 100 Jim Masselos views the shift as a transition from subaltern as independent (historical) actor to objectified hero. 101 Certainly, by the second Calcutta Conference, the project had reached a crossroads in which some members (e.g., Guha) advocated the refutation of existing paradigms in favor of negation. For Guha, this meant the negation of a nationalist narrative in which colonial revolts were all part of a greater vision, i.e., events (moments) in the emergence of nationhood. For Guha, like Prakash, 1~ there is a denial of the possibility of acknowledging and recognizing "difference" within general systems. 103 In Calcutta, there were voices of dissent. For Ashok Sen, the value of Subaltern Studies lay in its contribution to the struggle for socialism in India. Deconstructionism, from his perspective, is a critical tool which all too easily can lead to relativism. Hardiman indicated two possible directions for the future: on the one hand,

241

textual analysis emphasizing the relativity of knowledge; on the other, the comprehension of subaltern consciousness and action in the pursuit of struggles towards a socialist society. Thus far, the outcome, expressed in the publication of volume VII (1992), edited by Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey, follows neither path and is the most disparate collection of essays to date. 204

No~s
1. 2. 3. E.J. Hobsbawm, Bandits (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969). E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Gollanz, 1963). E.D. Genovese, "American Slaves and their History," in A. Weinstein and F. O. Gatell, eds., American Negro Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). J. Banaji, "Backward Capitalism, Primitive Accumulation and Modes of Production, in Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 3, no. 4 (1973), pp. 293413. E.W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). J. Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1976). R. Barthes, in S. Heath, ed., Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana, 1977). J. Lacan, "God and the Jouissance of Women" and "A Love Letter," in J. Mitchell and Jacqueline R. trans., Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne (London: Macmillan, 1982). Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 11. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., pp. 12-13. "I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the 'obsolete' hand-loom weaver, the 'utopian' artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity . . . . Their aspirations were valid in terms of their experience." A. Gramsci, in Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith eds. And trans., Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971).

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

Ibid.
M. Foucault, "Afterword: The Subject and Power," in H. L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 208.

15. 16. 17.

Ibid.
M. Foucault in A. Sheridan and L. A. Smith, trans., Archaeology of

Knowledge (London: Tavistock Publications, 1972).


M. Foucault, in A. Sheridan and L. A. Smith trans., Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Allen Lane, 1977).

242 18. 19. The term "teratology" denotes tales of the amazing or monstrous. In reconstructing history, Foucault focused on marginal groups in Western society in order to reveal the processes of social exclusion. See R. Boyne, Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990). H. L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics.. N. Fairclough, Michel Foucault and the Analysis of Discourse (Working Paper 10, Centre for Language in Social Life: Lancaster University, n.d.). Derrida, Of Grammatology. R. Boyne, Foucault and Derrida, 1990. M. Ryan, Marxism and Deconstructionism: A Critical Articulation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). Derrida, in interview with J. Kearns and K. Newton, in Literary Review 14 (1980), pp. 21-22, referred to himself as a Marxist! M. Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction, p. 149. R. Guha, "On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies I (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982). Volume references to the journal will be included in the text. S. Henningham, "Quit India in Bihar and the Eastern United Provinces: The Dual Revolt," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies II (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). D. Chakrabarty, "Trade Unions in a Hierarchical Culture: The Jute Workers of Calcutta, 1920-50," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies III (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984). P. Chatterjee, "Gandhi and the Critique of Civil Society," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies III. D. Chakrabarty, "Conditions for Knowledge of Working Class Conditions: Employers, Government and the Jute Workers of Calcutta," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies H. P. Chatterjee, "More on Modes of Power and the Peasantry," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies. D. Arnold, "Famine in Peasant Consciousness and Peasant Action: Madras, 1876-78," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies 111. G. C. Spivak, "Discussion: Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies IV (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985). Gramsci, Notes on Indian History," p. 55. G. Pandey, "Encounters and Calamities: The History of a North Indian Qasba in the Nineteenth Century," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies H. Interestingly, Arnold (1977) in an early pre-subaltern publication on the Congress in Tamilnadu nationalist politics 1919-1937, focuses on the paradox of the late colonial situation in which Congress was concurrently the most powerful opponent of British rule and the most likely ally. In this work, the reproduction of archival accounts in which non-elite action is reduced to law

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

243 and order problems (e.g., reference to violence, mobs, youths stoning cars, storming of houses by rowdies, etc.), reinforces the elitist construction of historiography. See D. Arnold, The Congress in Tamilnadu Nationalist Politics in South India 1919-1937 (London: Curzon Press, 1977)., Arnold presents a different view in which the Quit India Movement is portrayed as a twist "at the end of the tale of British India." Ibid., p. 186. D. Hardiman, "The Indian 'Faction': A Political Theory Examined," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies I. According to Hardiman, this view is represented in the work of P. Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh (California University Press, 1976). While not denying the validity of the germ "faction," Hardiman advocates the restriction of its use to "those political cliques which struggle amongst themselves for power and whose members hold broadly similar class interests." Ibid., p. 230. Ibid. P. Chatterjee, "Agrarian Relations and Communalism in Bengal 1926-1935," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies I. Ibid. A. Das, "Agrarian Change from Above and Below: Bihar 1947-78," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies H. D. Arnold, "Rebellious Hillmen: The Gudem-Rampa Risings 1839-1924," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies I. G. Bhadra, "The Mentality of Subalternity: Kantanama or Rajdharma," in Guha and Ranajit eds., Subaltern Studies VI (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). Arnold, "Rebellious Hillmen," p. 141. Ibid. ; Arnold, "Famine in Peasant Consciousness and Peasant Action: Madras 1876-1878," p. 64. Arnold is one of the few contributors to the first three volumes who systematically integrates a gender dimensions into his analysis. His discussion extends to rain-making ceremonies, prostitution, relief, looting and suicide. In rain-making ceremonies, he describes the reversal of the usual gender roles in a ceremony in which women washed and held the plough (1984:73). Chakrabarty (1984) discusses the role of a woman--Prabhahati Das Gupta--in the leadership of the 1929 strike. This class based action during times of famine is confirmed by my own archival research on famine in the late nineteenth century in the Bombay, Bengal and Madras Presidencies. See Currie, "British Colonial Policy and Famines: Some Effects and Implications of 'Free Trade in the Bombay and Bengal and Madras Presidencies' (1860-1900)," in South Asia vol. Xiv, 2 (1991). Arnold, "Famine in Peasant Consciousness and Peasant Action," p. 115. S. Amin, "Small Peasant Commodity Production and Rural Indebtedness: The Case of Sugarcane in Eastern U.P., c. 1880-1920," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies I.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

50.

51. 52.

244 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. Banaji, "Backward Capitalism, Primitive Accumulation and Modes of Production." R. Guha, "The Prose of Counter-Insurgency," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies H (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). Ibid. Ibid., 1983, p. 33. See Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Alien Lane, 1977). Chakrabarty, "Conditions of Knowledge for Working Class Conditions," p. 265. Ibid., pp. 285-286. Charabarty suggests the practice of worshiping machine tools on altars decked with flowers and sweetmeats was widespread in Calcutta. See R. Williams, Culture (London: Fontana, 1981). Chakrabarty, "Trade Unions in a Hierarchical Culture," p. 151. Ibid., p. 152. Williams, Culture, p. 10. The category of subaltern, of course, is complex, dynamic and variable. See Arnold, "Famine in Peasant Consciousness and Peasant Action," in which rich peasants are defined as subalterns in relation to zamindars. D. Arnold, "Gramsci and Peasant Subalternity in India," in Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 114, no. 4 (1984), pp. 155-177. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 55. D. Washbrook, "Modem South Indian Political History: An Interpretation," in R. Frykenberg and P. Kolenda eds., Studies of South India: An Anthology of Recent Research and Scholarship (Madras: New Era Publications, 1985), p.l13. P. Robb, "New Directions in South Asian History," in South Asia Research, vol. 7, no. 2 (1987), pp. 123-142. A. Sen, "Discussion: Subaltern Studies: Capital, Class and Community," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies IV. B. S. Cohn, ',The Command of Language and the Language of Command," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies IV. D. Arnold, "Bureaucratic Recruitment and Subordination in Colonial India: The Madras Constabulary 1859-1947" in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies IV. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Discussion: Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography," in R. Guha ed., Suablatern Studies IV (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 331. A. Chaudhury, "Discussion: In Search of a Subaltern Lenin," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies V. Edward Said foreword to R. Guha and G. Spivak eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988). Ibid., pp. vii-ix. P. Chatterjee, "Caste and Subaltern Consciousness," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies VI (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989).

60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76.

245 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.
90. 91.

92.

93. 94. 95. 96.

97.

98. 99.

Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 420. R. Guha, "Dominance Without Hegemony and its Historiography," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies VI. G. Pandey, "The Colonial Construction of Communalism: British Writings on Banaras in the Nineteenth Century," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies VI. D. Hardiman, "The Bhils and the Shahukars of Eastern Gujarat," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies V. D. Arnold, "Touching the Body: Perspectives on the Indian Plague 18961900," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies V. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 56. R. Guha, "Chandra's Death," in Subaltern Studies V. S. Amin, "Approvers Testimony, Judicial Discourse" The Case of Chauri Chaura," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies V. M. Foucault ed., J. Pierre Rivi~re . . . . . A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century (London: Penguin, 1978). G.C. Spivak, "A Literary Representation of the Subaltern Mahasweta Devi's Stanadayani," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies V. Spivak, "A Literary Representation of the Subaltern," p. 104. S. Sarkar, "The Kalki-Avatar of Bikrampur: A Village Scandal in Early Twentieth Century Bengal," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies VI. Ibid. Gautam Bhadra,"The Mentality of Subalternity: Kantanama or Rajdharma," (Vol. VI, 1989), p. 89. J. Stephens, "Feminist Fictions: A Critique of the Category 'Non Western Women' in Feminist Writings on India," in R. Guha ed., Subaltern Studies V1. M. Kishwar and R. Vanita eds., In Search of Answers: Indian Women's Voices from Manushi (London: Zed Press, 1984). G. Omvedt, We will Smash this Prison: Indian Women in Struggle (London: Zed Press, 1980). C . A . Bayly, "Rallying Around the Subaltern," in Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 16, no. 1 (1988), pp. 110-120. Within the Subaltern Studies series as a whole, Marxism is both object of criticism and conceptual apparatus which may inform analysis. Marx' analytical influence is evident in, for example, Chatterjee (1982), Amin (1982), Chakrabarty (1983) and Spivak (1987). T. Brass, "Moral Economists, Subalterns, New Social Movements and the (Re-) Emergence of a (Post-) Modemised (Middle) Peasant," in The Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 18, no. 2 (1991), pp. 173-205. R. O'Hanlon, "Recovering the Subject," in Modern Asian Studies, vol. 22, no. 1 (1988), pp. 189-224. D. Hardiman, "Subaltern Studies at Crossroads," in Economic and Political Weekly, February 15 (1986), pp. 288-290.

246 100. 101. 102. T. Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh (Los Angeles: California University Press, 1965). J. Masselos, "The Dis-Appearance of Subalterns: A Reading of a Decade of Subaltern Studies," in South Asia XV, no. 1 (1992), pp. 105-125. G. Prakash, "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography," in Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 32, no. 2 (1990), pp. 383-408. On this point see: R. O'Hanlon and D. Washbrook, "After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism, and Politics in the Third World," in Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 34, no. 1 (1992). The disparate collection of essays in Volume VII (1992), edited by P. Chatterjee and G. Pandey, includes one by Terence Ranger on the shrines of the Matops of Southern Matabeleland; Partha Chatterjee on the Calcutta middle class; Sudipta Kaviraj on the imaginary institution of India; Amitav Ghosh on a slave who featured in medieval manuscripts discovered in the nineteenth century; and Upendra Baxi on law in Subaltern Studies.

103.

104.

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