Abstract
The debate on the subaltern approach to understanding the history and society of colonial India (and South Asia, in general) and the seminal studies that this debate produced constitute a significant epoch in the historiography and the social sciences in India.
Beginning with the early 1980s, this debate, initiated by Ranjit Guha and his collaborators, and the studies it occasioned established a new genre of writing history from ‘below’. The 12 volumes of Subaltern Studies published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi since 1982 have become a critical reference point for social scientists engaged in researching India both in her historical and contemporary perspectives.
Intrinsically linked to the concept of subalternity is the idea of ‘social exclusion’. As first used by the French public servant Rene Lenoir in 1974, ‘social exclusion’ is an umbrella term covering various categories of the marginalised population—mentally and physically handicapped persons, aged invalids, abused children, etc. However, in the context of India, this term is used more narrowly to refer to those sections of the population that have been chronically excluded from the mainstream society—like the depressed jatis, tribal communities, religious minorities and gender groups. The shift in the focus of social sciences towards these excluded categories is more than mere extending their research coverage. More importantly, subalternity has warranted a change in the standpoint from which these excluded categories are studied: a clear shift from being treated as existential objects of social research to being viewed as essential subjective participants.
Neither subalternity nor exclusion, however, suggests that social reality is frozen. Even without invoking these concepts, it is easy to recognise the broad sweep of forces of change, planned as well as unplanned, to which our society has been subjected to right from the time of colonialism and since independence. What is important to appreciate, the excluded have been subjected to and are active agents of the process of social change. Is subalternity, notwithstanding its heuristic significance, conceptually adequate to explain the complex social changes in contemporary India? Given its own value load, is the methodology of the subaltern approach missing out important insights? More importantly, there remain key questions about ‘subaltern reproduction’: ‘Why and how does a society produce and reproduce subalterns? How do subalterns negotiate their social and political emancipation? How do they absorb social and political changes?’ (Ashok K. Pankaj and Ajit K. Pandey, ‘Preface’, p. vii).
As stated succinctly by editors Pankaj and Pandey, the volume under review attempts to capture ‘the processes of the use of ideology, knowledge and power to reproduce subalterns and subalternity …; to map the dominant trajectories of emancipation and assertion adopted by the subalterns; and to analyse the forces of social and cultural changes including resistance to those changes’ (ibid.). It argues that ‘the reproduction of subalterns and subalternity, subalterns negotiating emancipation and assertion amidst oppression, subjugation and even atrocities, and simultaneous working of social and cultural changes and reactions to those changes are important social facts of contemporary Indian society …’ (ibid.).
The volume contains 15 erudite essays neatly organised into five sections. It is embellished by a crisp ‘Foreword’ by Yogendra Singh. In their editorial introduction, the sole essay in section one, Pankaj and Pandey observe, subalternity in India is determined by the ‘distance of social and degree of economic exclusion’ which ‘exist in a mutually reinforcing relation’ (p. 3). Social change in such a society has many determinants and is devoid of ‘an independent character and a linear trajectory’ (ibid.). It is from this problematic of the relationship between subalternity and exclusion, on the one hand, and social change, on the other, that Pankaj and Pandey derive the axial theme of the volume.
The three essays in the second section engage with the approach and methodology of subaltern studies in India. K.L. Sharma recounts the origin and development of subaltern scholarship, its critique of the elitism of the historiography of ‘colonialists’ and ‘bourgeois nationalists’, and its effort in formulating a perspective of society from ‘below’. Dipankar Gupta provides a lucid analysis of the attempt of the anthropology-inspired historiography of subalternists as a project ‘to alter the ego in history by bringing the people back in’ (p. 56). V.S. Sreedhara examines the discourse on subaltern studies with reference to human rights question in India so as to understand the subaltern condition of Dalits.
The three essays in the third section discuss ‘subaltern reproduction’ through idea, knowledge and power. Ashok K. Pankaj argues that ‘the discourse on the new political economy of India is loaded against the interests of Dalit and Backward Class movement’ (p. 106). Based on an empirical study of two service castes, namely, washerman and barber, Madhav Govind analyses ‘the process of marginalization, appropriation and subjugation of indigenous practices and techniques in the discourse of knowledge production’ (p. 119). Exploring the failure of ‘mass education’, Nita Kumar discerns the production and reproduction of ‘a vast class of citizens who do not have access to the democratic rights that could be theirs through an educational system that was equally good for the masses and the elites’ (p. 149).
The three essays in the fourth section elucidate the modes of assertion and the routes of emancipation adopted by the subalterns. Yagati Chinna Rao traces the history of Dalit movement in south India, in general, and in Telugu-speaking regions, in particular. He seeks to provide a corrective to the ‘mainstream history’, which has been apathetic to Dalit consciousness and neglected the non-elite and non-Brahmin contribution to the nationalist movement. By analysing Karukku, an autobiography of Bama, a Tamil Parayar woman who converted to Roman Catholicism and became a nun, Rajan Joseph Barrett examines the mirage and contradictions of social inclusion through conversion. Barrett argues, ‘… it is the subaltern as an agent in his/her inclusion, who plays an important role in finding creative and novel ways to redefine and remake a hegemonic society from below’ (p. 229). S. Galab and E. Revathi analyse the interface between women’s access to land and their increased participation in agriculture and land, on the one hand, and their empowerment, on the other.
The five essays in the fifth section are devoted to discussing various aspects of social and cultural changes in the country. T.N. Madan focuses on religion and secularisation, and Hetukar Jha and Mahendra Prasad Singh provide a critical appraisal of the ‘exclusivist view of Hinduism’. K.L. Sharma emphasises the significance of caste–class nexus in the study of social stratification. Based on over three decades of work in rural Bihar, Gerry Rodgers analyses the changing relationship between caste and class. Finally, Madhu Nagla examines the traditional multi-village patriarchal institution of khap panchayat and its extra-judicial functioning in contemporary north India.
Pankaj and Pandey deserve to be complimented for thinking of putting together this volume of essays elucidating the relationship between subalternity and exclusion, on the one hand, and social change, on the other. However, the volume falls far short of achieving their objective. Excepting the first four essays, the remaining 11 essays steer clear of engaging themselves with the theoretical and methodological premises of subaltern approach. None of the essays in sections three through five make reference to the tomes generated by the subalternists. This is striking, considering Dipankar Gupta’s observation that ‘No longer is it possible to discuss modern or even contemporary Indian history without referring either to the works of [Ranjit] Guha or to the literature sponsored by him’ (p. 56).
Furthermore, the five essays in the fifth section dealing with social and cultural changes hang loose in the volume. Their relevance to an understanding of the relationship between subalternity and exclusion, if any, is tenuous. There is no essay on the religious minorities and tribes, both of which appear explicitly in the categories that have experienced and are experiencing exclusion and subalternity. Though the editors clarify that this ‘obvious omission’ is ‘not deliberate’, it has undoubtedly weakened the substantive thrust of the volume. All the same, the essays in the volume do justice to the respective theme that they deal with and they are all well written.