9 Approaches to the study of Indian society

Poulomi Ghosh

epgp books

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Introduction

1. Subaltern Historiography

2. The historiography of peasant Insurgency

3. Critique of the subaltern perspective

4. Conclusion: Subaltern perspective of Ranajit Guha

 

Did you know?

 

INTRODUCTION:

 

In critical theory and post- colonialism, subaltern is the social group who are socially, politically and geographically outside the hegemonic power structure of the colony or the colonial homeland. The subaltern identity is conceptually derived from the cultural-hegemony work of the Italian Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci. There has been a characteristic tendency for sociology, Social anthropology, history and ethnography to study the depths of micro-reality but not rising above it into the realm of conceptualizing or theorizing it. The realm of subaltern was not conceptualized properly till Ranajit Guha and his colleagues launched the subaltern approach in a big way. Ranajit Guha is credited with the conception of ‘subaltern historiography’, an important approach to the study of tribal/peasant movements in India and elsewhere. This approach seeks to look into the politics of the ‘people’ as against the politics of the elite played in the Indian history. Thus, it constructs the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’ as binaries (Dhanagare, 1988). In the following paper, we look at Ranajit Guha’s method of subaltern historiography, the historiography of the peasant and tribal insurgencies, the influence of Marxism and other theoretical frameworks on his methodology, and the impact his subaltern perspective has had on the trajectory of the discipline of Indian sociology.

 

SUBALTERN HISTORIOGRAPHY:

 

Proponents of the subaltern approach believe that the elitist historiography, whether that of the neo-colonists or neo-nationalists has failed to incorporate or acknowledge the contributions made by the people, independent of the elite. Rather, they have over-stated the role played by them in the interpretation building of Indian Nationalism. It maintains that parallel to the domain of elite politics, there has existed throughout the colonial period and later, another domain of politics which has subaltern groups and classes like the laboring population, and intermediate strata in towns and the country as the principal actors (Dhanagare, 1988). The subaltern historiography looks at people as an autonomous domain, i.e. it neither rises from nor depends on the national elite. Thus, it can be derived that unlike in elite politics, mobilization in subaltern politics is achieved horizontally and not vertically. Guha admits that due to differences in ideology, diversity of its social components, etc. the subaltern domain is not a homogenous uniformity. There are diversions and divisions amongst these groups and these tend to undermine the horizontal alliances.

 

The focus of subaltern historiography is to construct the ‘other history’, i.e. the history of people’s politics and their attempts to forge their own histories. While analyzing tribal and peasant insurgencies in colonial India, Guha points out the objective of historiography as being that of interpreting the past in order to change the present which requires a radical transformation of consciousness. He therefore urges historians and social scientists to view tribal or peasant insurgencies not merely as objects of history but rather as makers of their own history with their own transformative consciousness (Dhanagare, 1988). According to Guha, conventional discourses on peasant/tribal insurgencies have served under the colonial historiography where they are looked upon as disturbances in the law and order system. In this sense, these studies were ‘counter-insurgency’ attempts to prevent such uprisings in the future. These studies for Guha, neglected to look at the consciousness ridden spontaneity and structure in these movements, leaving them in the sphere of ‘pre-political’ phenomena. Ranajit Guha was of the view that the term pre-political was value-laden and misleading and rather, peasant/tribal insurgencies during colonial times have to viewed in the backdrop of the attempts of the colonial state to establish landlordism, and parasitic landlords. The peasantry and tribal groups rebelled against the oppression to which they were subjected in this existing structure of power relationships. In this sense, their rebellions were not pre-political but were as political as the politics under the Congress or left wing peasant struggles in the twentieth century. Guha however does acknowledge that the basic elements like ideology, leadership, and aims of these early movements were qualitatively different from the more advanced movements of the twentieth century (Dhanagare, 1988). Ranajit Guha’s objective in studying insurgent movements has been to understand how patterns of subordination and insubordination have run parallel throughout the colonial period of India.

 

In order to better understand the subaltern historiography of the country, it is important to look into the colonial historiography offered by Guha:

  •  The historiography of Indian Nationalism has been dominated by elitism- colonialist and bourgeoisie-nationalist elitism. According to Guha, both originated as the ideological product of the British colonialism.
  • Both these varieties of elitism share the thought that the making of the Indian nation and the development of the nationalist consciousness was a credit to their elite efforts.
  • The colonialist historiography defines the Indian Nationalism as a response to stimuli, i.e. it is an aggregation of the ideas, institutions and resources brought about by the colonialism. This view looks at Indian nationalism as a sort of learning process through which the native elite associated themselves with the colonial elite in order to share in the rewards such as a share in wealth, power and prestige.
  • The nationalist elite on the other hand painted the Indian nationalism as a phenomenal expression where the goodness of the native elite combined with their antagonistic relation with the colonial regime covers the reality of their cooperativeness and association with them. According to Guha, there is glorification on their part, of their role as champions of the people and the oppressed, leading them to their freedom rather than depicting their acceptance of a modicum of power and privilege granted to them by the colonial powers.
  • For Guha, this elitist historiography is not without its uses since it helps to understand the ideological nature of the historiography itself.
  • However, this kind of historical writing cannot be accepted since it presents an incomplete and hence faulty picture of Indian nationalism. It is not inclusive of the contribution made by the people themselves, independent of the national elites. It does not explain how mass movements like the Quit India movement of 1942 and the anti-Rowlatt upsurge of 1919 took place, amassing thousands of people. It does not situate such movements as real political processes by the people, but rather as an ideological appropriation by the influential elite.
  • According to Guha, the inadequacy of the elitist historiography results from the fact that the parameters of Indian politics is assumed to be those of the institutions introduced and set-up by the British government and the corresponding set of laws, attitudes, etc. and thus it equates politics with the activities of those directly involved in operating these institutions.
  • The elitist historiography leaves out the autonomous domain of politics of the people consisting of subaltern classes and groups. This domain is termed autonomous by Guha because it did not originate from the elite politics nor did it depend on it for its existence. Its roots can be traced back to pre-colonial times since which it has transformed to adjust itself to the conditions prevailing under the colonial rule. One of the important characteristics of this domain was the horizontal mobilization of people relying on traditional organization of kinship and territory, or, class associations depending upon the level of consciousness of the people. These subaltern mobilizations tended to be relatively more violent as against the legalistic and constitutionalist mobilizations of the elite. They were also more spontaneous in nature, which for Guha was most comprehensively visible in peasant uprisings.
  • In spite of the diversity of the subaltern domain, one of its features was a notion of resistance to elite domination. This followed from the common position of subjugation faced by all the social constituents of the domain.
  • Another distinctive feature of the subalterns was the exploitation which these classes were subjected to in varying degrees- its relation to the productive labor of peasants and workers to the manual and intellectual labor of the non-industrial urban poor and the lower sections of the petty bourgeoisie. The collective experience of exploitation put these classes as separate from the elite.
  • Guha asserts that though there have been modifications in the course of these subaltern mobilizations, these medications have still maintained the demarcations between the elite and the subaltern. That is, they have co-existed. This for Guha is a result of the inability of the Indian bourgeoisie to speak for the entire nation. They failed to integrate vast areas in the lives and consciousness of the people into their hegemony. He terms this as a structural dichotomy.
  • The existence of such a structural dichotomy does not mean that there has been no contact between the two domains, instead, Guha puts forth that from time to time, there efforts have been made by the bourgeoisie to integrate them.
  • Guha also maintains that the initiatives originated from the subaltern domain could not be realized to their full potential of achieving national liberation because the working class had not yet achieved the consciousness of being-a-class-for-itself and also could not firmly ally itself to the peasantry. The sectional nature of the subaltern domain did not get the revolutionary leadership that required to rise above the localism and reach a generalized nation-wide campaign. Guha contends that this failure due to the inadequacy of the bourgeoisie and the working class to achieve national liberation is the core subject matter to be studied in the historiography of colonial India.

 

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF PEASANT INSURGENCY:

 

As mentioned before, the historiography of peasant insurgency has been a record of the efforts of the colonial administration to deal with mass uprisings in the country. These insurgencies have always been looked at as uprisings which have disrupted law and order, a pathology which needs to be corrected or brought under control. The peasant historiography of the country does not locate such struggles as efforts to achieve social justice. In his study of ‘Elementary aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983)’, Guha seeks to acknowledge this failure and instead understand the aims and motives of the insurgents themselves. He adopts the vantage point of the peasants and tries to evaluate the awareness the peasants have of their own world and their situation and their will to change it. The object of this study was to depict the struggle not as encounters but in its general form, the elements of which come from the long history of the peasant’s subaltern position and his efforts to end it.

 

Ranajit Guha has abstracted certain elements and general ideas in the insurgent ’s consciousness which point to the structural similarity between various different movements from the period 1783-1900 studied by anthropologists, historians and ethnographers. These forms are – ‘negation’, ‘ambiguity’, ‘modality’, ‘solidarity’, ‘transmission’, and ‘territoriality’ (Dhanagare, 1988).

  • Negation: According to Guha, the first elementary form of peasant or insurgent tribal consciousness is negation (implying the formation of a negative identity). This suggests that the rebel’s idea of his own identity is not formed of his own properties or characteristics but by the ideas and negations of those superior. For example, the insurgent’s identity of himself is formulated on the basis of the colonial administrations identity of them as disrupters of law and order. This negativity for Guha does not form a class consciousness in itself but rather is the first step in forming a class consciousness. The formation of negativity, combined with the ability to differentiate between friends and foes, leads to selective violence against perceived enemies. In the Indian context, peasants and tribal insurgents negatively asserted their identity and consciousness by rejecting the homological relations in feudal society, which is rejecting and turning up-side down all the traditional forms of respect, dressing styles, writing, language, etc. Negation thus involved the turning down of all symbols which were the preserve of the feudal monarchies, from which the subaltern was always excluded.
  • Ambiguity: As described by Guha, this element draws on the basic difference between ‘crime’ and ‘insurgency’. According to Guha, crime tends to be individualistic, secretive or conspiratorial action, whereas insurgency has a mass character and is manifested publicly. These two actions derive from two codes of violence. The outward manifestation of this violence, however, may seem similar. Thus there is an ambiguity in the violence which is a part of the insurgency.
  • Modality: Modality is the third elementary aspect of these insurgencies. It is the extension of the public nature of the peasant and tribal insurgencies. Guha draws on the example of the Pabna riots of 1873, the Santhal upsurge of 1855 and the Deccan riots of 1875 to bring out the concept of modality. In these examples, there is a stark search by the rebels to search for an alternative source of authority, which was validated and stated through a general body of insurgents by rituals like presenting tokens (nazraanas) to the elected representative. These ritualizations were symbolic of not only their validation of a more representative authority figure but also marked their rebellion as a public service and a political act. Guha also states the secular nature of this modality. For him, mobilization in peasant and tribal insurgency rarely ever has taken on religious overtones but this has been falsified later on. It is possible for agrarian distress to take on religious overtones coupled with issues of ethnic identity as seen in the Birsa Munda movement. Guha also does not give due importance to the economic modality of such uprisings. Guha has asserted that in the course of their rebellion, actions of destruction of property, looting and burning, does not have considerations of economic gain. According to D.N Dhanagare (1988), economic rationality can be completely absent from such actions of the insurgents because certain examples like looting of cash by the Santhals in Chotanagpur might be an effort to aim for power motives but also be triggered by economic gains and opportunities. Guha’s subaltern project might have glorified the actions of insurgents by denying them the practicality of economic rationality, which the colonial historiography does suggest. Another modality mentioned by Guha is that of plunder and destruction which is not to be confused with killing and bloodshed. The latter for Guha, is more a modality for the counter-insurgency projects. Guha attributes this lack of killing and bloodshed among tribal and peasant insurgencies not to their compassion and heroism but to their lack in ability to break away completely from their old semi-feudal culture.
  • Solidarity: Solidarity is the next form through which the peasant consciousness presents itself, according to Guha. It signifies the stage of separation from of the insurgent’s own identity from that of its enemies. Guha has made two important points here: firstly, the quality of ‘class consciousness’ changes from one phase of the insurgency to the other. Secondly, class solidarity and other types of solidarity like those rising from ethnic, religious, caste or filial ties do not have to be mutually exclusive. Rather, they can overlap with one another. He characterizes this as the duplex character of insurgency. This solidarity manifests itself as hostility towards and chastisement of traitors. Insurgency inspires active collaboration against traitors among the insurgents which for Guha is an articulation of the insurgent’s own class consciousness.
  • Transmission: Through the element of transmission, Guha looks at the important way in which an insurgency spreads itself. It does so through iconic and symbolic signs, even rumors. Transmissions of this sort- both verbal and visual- are usually mediated through religion. Politics of rebellion or tribal insurgencies really are expressed through sacred symbols because, for Guha, religion helps in arousing mass support.
  • Territoriality: Lastly, territoriality is that aspect through which insurgents get bound together via a mutual feeling of belonging to a common lineage as well as to a shared habitat. It is an overlapping of the notion of common ethnic space and physical space. Guha has also stressed that this element of consciousness has sometimes transcended the limits of filial ties, or space or even both. Guha uses this to critique anthropologists who failed to see beyond the anti-colonial content of the tribal revolts and peasant movements in India and thereby helped in perpetuating the myth that such insurgencies have been nothing more than demonstrations of ethnic antagonism against the outsiders or mere ‘disturbance’ in the law and order of the colonial administration.

 

CRITIQUE OF THE SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE:

  •  According to many, the subaltern perspective still remains rudimentary because, to many, it is yet not clear as to what all it encompasses and how it differs in substance from the already existing practices in the social sciences. This is a problem that exists due to the lack of clarity of term ‘subaltern’ as an analytical category. For Guha, this category is not homogenous in its composition and it is up to the researcher to determine and identify the nature of the subalternity by situating it in a historical context. The ambiguity of the term lets one incorporate agricultural laborer, sharecroppers, impoverished landlords, rich and upper-middle level peasants, etc. all in the term subaltern or people. This leads to the problem of dealing with incompatible class outlooks and interests of these different groups.
  • There is also a doubt among some observers that, belonging to this perspective or opposing it, was often a matter of personal choice. For example, Sumit Sarker, who was once a part of this perspective became a critic when literature and culture based studies began to dominate because he felt that it shifted the attention from politics.
  • Another charge is that the constant focus of the subaltern perspective on cultural aspects and its efforts to valorize indigenous cultures under the assumption that whatever is indigenous is the best, can also be the mere representation of local forms of domination.
  • Critics of the subaltern perspective have questioned the notion of ‘autonomy’ of the subaltern consciousness. They have questioned the validity of such an attempt to study the subaltern groups and their insurgent movements in isolation to other political processes. It is possible that movements which appear to be autonomous can be preceded by several changes in the consciousness of their participants resulting from wider political processes including the elite politics which the followers of subaltern perspective have criticized. In the Indian context, it becomes problematic to deny the interface between the nationalist movement of the Indian National Congress and the grass-root level protests and resistances (Dhanagare, 1998).
  • Another critical observation of the subaltern approach to historiography is that it presents itself as being preferential to the colonial period only, though there are certain followers who do not strictly do so. Additionally, at least in appearance, it only looks at peasant/tribal movements which took on the insurgent characteristic excluding those which have not been truly revolutionary by nature. The close proximity of the term subaltern to the term insurgency makes it problematic as a scientific concept because the term subaltern does not specify any boundaries in terms of its applicability or basic properties (Dhanagare, 1988).
  • The subaltern perspective of Guha cannot be used to analyze some of the movements in India, like- The Shiv Sena in Maharashtra or movements for assertion of regional/sub-regional identities like the Vidarbha or Telangana. These political expressions of identity formation might have taken on insurgent characteristics at one point in time or another but mostly they have operated within the legal, constitutional framework of the country and by accepting its legitimacy and following liberal democratic means.

 

SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE OF RANAJIT GUHA:

 

Ranajit Guha’s subaltern approach to the study of Indian society draws heavily from the theoretical stream of Marxism. Marxism provides a logical and neat theoretical framework for an alternative society. It has both cognitive and emotive appeal because of its revolutionary notion. Even though Guha’s subaltern perspective borrows from Marxism its revolutionary stance, it differs from it in the sense that it offers a view from an Indian historiography and cultural window. According to Dhanagare, Guha’s subaltern approach combines four streams of contemporary Marxism:

  1. The first of these is Gramscian Marxism which emphasizes the role of spontaneity of the action of the subaltern population especially under a hegemonic state.
  2. It also follows from the Trotskyite-Marxism in terms of how it treats consciousness. It believes that objective theoretical positions are supreme and have to be viewed objectively rather than shifting them according to interest. It means that the subaltern approach to history views the role of the party, its actions and strategies as important but not prior to necessary consciousness
  3. The third stream is followed from the works of Eric Hobsbawn, George Rude and E.P. Thompson, who showed the indispensability of material forces and actors of history.

 

Guha and his associates have tried to model the trajectory of the subaltern approach in the same lines as the Paris Uprising in 1968, the Latin American movements- particularly the experience of Che Guevara in Bolivia and other similar movements.

 

The initial statement about the subaltern perspective was laid down in the first chapter of Subaltern Studies (Vol. 1) . It was authored by Guha, where he addressed historians, and expressed that the existing writing of history had been done only from the point of view of the elite and excluded the perspective of the downtrodden and the subaltern. It mentions how history has ignored the contributions made by the masses because of their placement and ignorance regarding means and mechanisms of speaking recognition. The subaltern perspective provides a scheme to relate the past with the present, empirical with ideological, segmental with pluralism and the mundane with transcendental (Nagla, 2008). It has presented the possibility of projecting, constructing and analyzing the lives of people, their institutions, problems, values, and the processes of their formation and structuration at local and regional levels. More importantly, it has provided the discipline of social sciences with a view separate from that of the hegemonic powers. The subaltern perspective has opened the gates for further disciplines like Sociology of social movements, which are making use of the subaltern legacy to study social movements from a different perspective.

 

DID YOU KNOW?

  1. The subaltern studies got recognition due to the sheer persistence of its propagators. The large number of volumes of subaltern studies which kept appearing, the enthusiasm of the scholars involved in it, its impatience in dismissing the ruling perspective, and its criticism made it develop into an entirely new perspective in the social sciences.
  2.  Subaltern studies began its impressive career in England at the end of the 1970s, when conversations on subaltern themes among a small group of English and Indian historians led to a proposal to launch a new journal in India. Oxford University Press in New Delhi agreed instead to publish three volumes of essays called Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society. These appeared annually from 1982 and their success stimulated three more volumes in the next five years, all edited by Ranajit Guha. When he retired as editor in 1989, Ranajit Guha and eight collaborators had written thirty-four of forty-seven essays in six Subaltern Studies volumes, as well as fifteen related books. By 1993, the group he remembers as originally being ‘an assortment of marginalized academics’ had sufficient international prestige for a Latin America Subaltern Studies Group to be inspired by this interdisciplinary organization of South Asian scholars led by Ranajit Guha. Today, eleven (and counting) Subaltern Studies volumes have appeared. They include essays by forty-four authors, whose allied publications approach two hundred, including translations in several languages.
  3. The Paris uprising of 1968 began with a series of student occupation protests against capitalism, consumerism, and traditional institutions, values and order. It then spread to factories with strikes involving 11,000,000 workers, more than 22% of the total population of France at the time, for two continuous weeks. The movement was characterized by its spontaneous and de-centralized disposition; this created contrast and sometimes even conflict between itself and the establishment, trade unions and workers’ parties. It was the largest general strike ever attempted in France, and the first ever nation-wide wildcat general strike. The student occupations and wildcat general strikes initiated across France were met with forceful confrontation by university administrators and police. The de Gaulle administration’s attempts to quell those strikes by police action only inflamed the situation further, leading to street battles with the police in the Latin Quarter, followed by the spread of general strikes and occupations throughout France.
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 Web links

 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3517459

 

 

RFERENCES:

  • Dhanagare, D.N. “Subaltern Consciousness and Populism: Two Approaches in the Study of Social Movements in India”. Social Scientist. Vol. 16, No. 11 (Nov. 1988), pp18-35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3517459
  • Nagla, B.K. Indian Sociological Thought. Jaipur. Rawat Publications, 2008.
  • Ludden, Davis. “Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia”. Anthem Press. 2002.
  • Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (Ed.). “Selected Subaltern Studies”. Oxford University Press, 1988. pp35-86.