Name : Abhineesh Agnihotri

Course : B.A.(Hons.)History
Roll no. : 2022/05/107
Sec. : A
Subject: G.E. Poli cal Science; Na onalism in India
Assignment : No.1 Subaltern Studies

Subaltern Studies:
Towards Nationalism in India

INTRODUCTION:
“History is the recorded struggle of people for ever increasing freedom and for newer higher
realisa on of the human process. The common people possess the capacity to make history.
In fact the historic ini a ve of the masses has me and again produced social cataclysms
that have changed the world.” The subaltern approach centres on and around the people, as
people cons tute the central theme of history. The subaltern studies of history claims to be
an improvement on the eli st mode (both Marxist and Non-Marxist type) of exploring and
explaining history. This mode of explaining history also known as “history from below” aims
at construc ng the paradigm of subaltern consciousness manifes ng in different forms, at
different places, and at different mes. ‘Subaltern studies’ is a new trend of wri ng history,
like other trends i.e. Imperialism, Primi vism, Na onalism, Marxism, Neo-Marxism,
Feminism, Ambedkarism etc. The need of rewri ng and revalua on on the basis of narra on
of history is being expressed.
‘Subaltern’, meaning ‘of inferior rank’, is a term adopted by Antonio Gramsi (1891-1937), an
Italian Marxist and Communist Party Leader, refers to those groups in society who are
subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes. A subaltern is someone with a low ranking in
a social, poli cal, or other hierarchy. It can also mean someone who has been marginalised
or oppressed. From the La n roots sub- “below”, and alternus “all others”, subaltern is used
to describe someone of a low rank (as in the military) or class (as in a caste system).
Subalterns occupy entry-level jobs or occupy a lower rung of the “corporate ladder.” But the
term is also used to describe someone who has no poli cal or economic power, such as a
poor person living under a dictatorship. Different kinds of synonyms are used for the word
‘Subaltern’, like: common people, lower-class, underprivileged, exploited, inferiors, minors,
weak etc.

Subaltern Study in Indian perspec ve:

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Wri ngs on Indian History and Society began in 1982 as a series of interven ons in some
deôbates specific to the wri ng of modern Indian history. Ranajit Guha (b. 1923), a historian
of India then teaching at the University of Sussex, was the inspira on behind it. Guha and
eight younger scholars based in India, the United Kingdom, and Australia cons tuted the
editorial collec ve of Subaltern Studies un l 1988, when Guha re red from the team.
In the early 1980s, a small group of Marxist scholars influenced by Antonio Gramsci’s Prison
Notebooks introduced “subaltern” as a new analy c category with in modern Indian
historiography. The scholars, led by Ranajit Guha, were dissa sfied with the interpreta ons
of India’s na onalist movement, which had long neglected “the poli cs of the people”, or
the subaltern classes, in the making of the Indian na on. For Guha, this historiography had
been dominated by an eli sm of colonialists, bourgeois na onalists, and even orthodox
Marxists, who had signally failed to take into account “the contribu ons made by the people
on their own, that is, independently of the elite”. Guha argued that the vast historiography
of the Freedom Movement of the nineteenth and twen eth century was “un-historical”,
“blinkered”, and “one-sided” because it primarily focused on the domain of elite poli cs
while silencing and refusing to interpret subaltern pasts. 5 He further explained that eli st
historiography was narrow and par al as a direct consequence of a commitment by scholars
to a par cular “class outlook” which privileged the ideas, ac vi es, and poli cs of the Bri sh
colonizers and dominant groups in Indian society. Guha founded the Subaltern Studies
project in collabora on with Shahid Amin, David Arnold, Partha Cha erjee, David Hardiman,
and Gyanendra Pandey with the specific aim of providing a correc ve to the historiography
by “comba ng eli sm” in academic research and wri ngs. 6 Star ng in 1982, the collec ve
began publishing thick, detailed essays in a series called Subaltern Studies in which the
subaltern classes were at the centre of history wri ng.
The philosophical base (founda on) of Dr. Guha’s ‘Subaltern studies’ is found in the wri ng
of Gramchi. Later on, eight issues of ‘Subaltern studies’ were published. Through these
issues he gave an outline of common people’s history. He also wrote “Elementary Aspects of
Peasant Emergency in Colonial India” In this book he wrote about the main parts of
peasant’s revolt “A farmer is the creator of his own history”, says Dr. Guha. Dr.Shahid Amin, a
close associate of Dr. Guha, has important contribu on in the wri ng of ‘Subaltern studies’.
He was the founder; editor and worked as teacher in history in Delhi University .
In the trend of ‘Subaltern studies’ Dr. Sumit Sarkar also has contributed a lot. He is known as
a brilliant historian, he employs the term subalterns for tribal and low-caste agricultural
labourers and share croppers, landholding peasants, generally of intermediate –caste status
in Bengal and labour in planta ons mines and industries. He studied Marxism and his
important wri ngs consist of the history of common people in na onal movement, history
of neglected group, leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in na onal movement and the dominant
nature of foreign colonial government. In 1977 he discussed with Dr. Ranjeet Guha and
turned towards this new trend. He wrote book like : Swadeshi Movement in Bengal (1973),
Popular Movements and Middle Class Leadership in the late Colonial India, Prespec ves and
problems of History from Below (1985), Wri ng Social History, Modern India 1885-1947 and

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1983-1985. He wrote ar cles as, Limits of Na onalism, Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern
studies, Beyond Na onalist frame.

Nature of the Subaltern Studies:

In the thousands years of history-wri ng it is clearly seen that there existed two kinds of
people: Superiors and Inferiors in the society. The superiors have been given more
importance. Therefore, it is expected in Subaltern studies to write the history again, making
it free. The inclusion of lower people or common men’s history has been agreed. This trend
of wri ng consists of the agony of exploited workers, labourers, oppressed caste, and
women’s income beyond the world of thoughts. The consciousness and autonomy of lower
class regarding consciousness is the founda on of Subaltern studies. “In the work of
subaltern studies it is necessary to reach up to not only the ideological part but also the
livelihood of common people i.e. poor farmers, shepherds, workers, labourers, oppressed
caste women. They are also human beings, they also think, take decisions, decide the way to
live and grow in the society. The subaltern studies, therefore, defy those historians who
regard people’s ac on as external to their consciousness. So, the chief concern of the
subaltern studies venture is thus to appreciate the people’s consciousness and their ac on.
A proper analysis of this consciousness and its due recogni on by the historians would
rightly present and project the subalterns as the maker of the history they live out.

Rise and growth of the Subaltern History Wri ng:-

The subaltern studies were proclaimed by its adherents as a new school in the field of Indian
history wri ng. In the early 1980s, there emerged in India a ‘school’ of history that goes by
the name of ‘Subaltern Studies’; this ‘school’ has now gained a world-wide reputa on, and
‘Subaltern Studies’ is beginning to make its influence felt in La n American Studies, African
Studies, ‘cultural studies’, and other arenas. Where previously the history of modern India,
and par cularly of the na onalist movement, was etched as a history of Indian ‘elites’, now
this history is being construed primarily as a history of ‘subaltern groups’. ‘Subaltern studies’
is a foreign trend of thoughts and the philosophical founda on of this trend is found in the
wri ng of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramchi. His thoughts were upheld by many
thinkers Frants Cannan, Jivche Zanax, Eric, Hobbs Bon George Rud, Shiro Brizand can be
specially men oned.

Subaltern Studies and Debates in Modern Indian History:

The academic subject called “modern Indian history” is a rela vely recent development, a
result of research and discussion in various universi es in India, the United Kingdom, the
United States, Australia, and elsewhere a er the end of Bri sh imperial rule in August 1947.

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In its early phase, this area of scholarship bore all the signs of an ongoing struggle between
tendencies affiliated with imperialist biases in Indian history and a na onalist desire on the
part of historians in India to decolonize the past. Marxism was understandably mobilized in
aid of the na onalist project of intellectual decoloniza on.7 Bipan Chandra’s book The Rise
and Growth of Economic Na onalism in India (1969), Anil Seal’s Emergence of Indian
Na onalism (1968), A. R. Desai’s Social Background of Indian Na onalism (1966), D. A. Low’s
edited volume Soundings in Modern South Asian History (1968), the many seminal ar cles
published by Bernard Cohn (now collected in his An Anthropologist among the Historians
[1988]), debates around Morris David Morris’s assessment of the results of Bri sh rule in
India, and the work of other scholars in the 1960s raised new and controversial ques ons
regarding the nature and results of colonial rule in India. Na onalism and colonialism thus
emerged, unsurprisingly, as the two major areas of research and debate defining the field of
modern Indian history in the 1960s and 1970s. At one extreme of this debate was the
Cambridge historian Anil Seal, whose 1968 book The Emergence of Indian Na onalism
pictured “na onalism” as the work of a ny elite reared in the educa onal ins tu ons the
Bri sh set up in India. This elite, as Seal put it, both “competed and collaborated” with the
Bri sh in their search for power and privilege.

CRITICISM AND RESPONSE OF THE SUBALTERN STUDIES:-

There has been wide-ranging cri cism of the Subaltern Studies from many quarters. Right
from the beginning the project has been cri qued by the Marxist, Na onalist and Cambridge
School historians, besides those who were not affiliated to any posi on. Almost all posi ons
it took, ranging from a search for autonomous subaltern domain to the later shi to
discourse analysis, came under scru ny and cri cism. Some of the earlier cri ques were
published in the Social Scien st. In one of them, Javeed Alam cri cised Subaltern Studies for
its insistence on an autonomous domain of the subaltern. According to Alam, the autonomy
of the subaltern poli cs is predicated on perpetuity of rebellious ac on, on a consistent
tendency towards resistance and a propensity to rebellion on the part of the peasant
masses. Whether this autonomous ac on is posi ve or nega ve in its consequences is of not
much concern to the Subalternists: ‘the historical direc on of militancy is of secondary
considera on. What is primary is the spontaneity and an internally located self-genera ng
momentum. Extending the implica ons of the inherent logic of such a theore cal
construc on, it is a ma er of indifference if it leads to communal rio ng or united an -
feudal ac ons that overcome the ini al limita ons. The subalternists took some me before
reac ng to the cri ques. Ranjit Guha railed against the cri cism by those whom he called
the vendors of readymade answers and academic old rods who supposedly posed as the
custodians of official truth entrenched within their liberal and le ist stockades. He
peremptorily dismissed the cri cism by those scholars who have lived too long with well-
rehearsed ideas and methodologies. The subalternists took some me before reac ng to the
cri ques. Dipesh Chakrabarty's reply was more detailed and asserted that : The central aim

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of the Subaltern Studies project is to understand the consciousness that informed and s ll
informs poli cal ac ons taken by the subaltern classes on their own, independently of any
elite ini a ve.‘ It was because, as shown by subaltern historians, in the course of na onalist
struggles involving popular mobiliza on the masses o en put their own interpreta ons on
the aims of these movements and proceeded to act them out.

Conclusion:-

The subaltern studies asserted itself as a radically new form of history-wri ng in the context
of Indian history. The History wri en ll now is one-sided, par al and not showing true
picture of low level group in society. A group of people is deprived of proper posi on. A
great man or intellectual group cannot create history. True history is not of superior group
but it is shaped from the group of common people. Subaltern studies became an original site
for a new kind of history from below, a people’s history free of na onal constraints, a post-
na onalist reimaging of Indian na on, on the other side, at the margins, outside
na onalism. This work brings together all the historians through the new trend of wri ng
‘Subaltern studies’, so that the recipients of success should get jus ce and in the same way
true history will be wri en.

References:
1. Dr. Sa sh K.Bajaj,(1988), “Recent Trends in Historiography”
2. Dr. Binod Bihari Satpathy,(2014) “ Subaltern Approach to Indian History” Indian
Historiography

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