Writing History

Author(s): Anita Chakravarty

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 51 (Dec. 23, 1995), p. 3320
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4403593
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DISCUSSION

Writing History languages, since the majority of printed matter

did not qualify as worthwhile literature and
were not preserved in libraries or written
Anita Chakravarty about by scholars. Putting together this
alternative archive will mean not just that
IT is surprising that Ramachandra Guha unanswered. Yet it was surely obvious to techniques of 'reading against the grain' could
('Subaltern and Bhadralok Studies', everyone that the vast masses of the Indian be applied to texts produced by the Indian
August 19) should claim (1) that writing people did not think, speak, dominate orrevolt elite in the Indian languages, as has been done
about the elite "is emphatically not subaltern in the English language. most impressively by recent femiinist scholars.
studies" and (2) that history should be written One possibility, of course, was oral history,
It also means an unprecedented chance to lay
only from "the field and the archive, the law which has been used very fruitfully in many our hands on a large body of written materials
court and the newspaper office" and not from studies on modern Indian history in the last produced by distinctly non-elite sections of
the library. two decades, perhaps most consummately in the people. It is foolish to suggest, as
One of the tirst things we learnt as students the recent book by Shahid Amin reviewed by Ramachandra Guha does, that a 'library' of
in the mid- I 980s about subaltern studies was Ramachandra Guha. But the limitations of printed literature, even for colonial India,
that subalternity was not a thing that belonged oral sources are well known, and for the contains only the writings of the elite. On the
to some social groups, it was a relation. It is development of any sustained historio- contrary, what is now rapidly becoming clear
perfectly possible, and in fact is most otten graphical practice, they could be an important
to researchers in cultural history is the
the case, that those who are in a position of supplement to, but never a substitute for. enormous
the volume of printed literature that
domination in one relation are simultaneously archive. could be sought out which carry the materials
in a subaltern position in another. Surely, Perhaps the most significant contribution of subaltern history at a level of immediately
every researcher today is aware that even of recent works in Subaltertii Studies to the that it is impossible to find in any other source.
among the most oppressed and disprivileged 'craft' of the historian of modem India is the One can understand that a European
groups there are relations of domination sustained way in which they have focuised historian such as Hans Medick, whom
within - those between men and women, the attention on, and indeed shifted the terrain of Ramachandra Guha cites, will not know of
old and the young, between one low caste debate to, the field constituted by the printed this pecuiliar problem with languages and
group and another. Why does it seem to literature of the last two hundred years in thesources that Indian historians have faced in
modern Indiani languages. It has already
Ramachandra Guha that a study of new forms the writing of'theirown history. It is astonishing
ot subordination ot women in middle class become clear thlla this is the principal archivethat Guha. an Indian scholar, does not seem
families (Dipesh Charkrabarty's essay in for modem Indian history. containing far riclherto be even remotely aware of the sea-change
Slubailtern Studies VIII) is not about treasures than the official archives, especially that has taken place in modern Indian
subalternity? One might also say that a most tor the historian of the subaltern classes. historiography in the last decades and a halt:
productive move in the recent works ot the Contrary to what Ramachandra Guha believes,Indian history cannot be written any more
Suibaltern Studties group is precisely theirthis does not "make it very easy for the except with materials in the Indian languages
problematisation of the subalternity ot the historian": not at all. As someone who, as a and for this the ot'ficial archive as historians
nationalist elite, a formulation that clearly has research student, has made the move from the have known it for so long will no longer
major implications tor our understanding of ofticial archive to the library, I know that sut'fice.
the new patterns of domination under the working with printed literature, at least in A tfinal point. Subalterni Studies has been
post-colonial regime. Bengali. is far more arduous, time-consuming admired and criticised in academic forums all
Guha's conilplaint about -abandoning the anid frustratiilln than working in the archives. over the world. But there has been a persistent
archive for the library", with its sentimentalThis is f-or the simple reason that this 'other strand in some ot'the criticisms that continues
evocation of the historian as a craltsinaii with archlive' - thalt of' the printed literature in to be made in India which betrays a different
soiled hands. is so patently ridiculous that it Bengali ol' lhe last two lhundred years - does anxiety. One of the achievements of Subtltern 1
hardly deserves comment. However, there is not physically exist in anv one placc. even Studies sclholarship is the svstemnatic
a more special point that needs to be made as a library. A researcher usually has to hunt demonstration of the close complicity of'elite
here. Historians of modern India have always around in a dozen libraries in and around ideologies, whether liberal, Gandhian or
known, but have rarely thought about, the tact Calcutta. without the benefit of usable Marxist, with the emergenlce of new forms
that the material in our official archives, withcatalogues; for the foilunate t'ew who have of domination and subordination in post-
negligible exceptions, are all in the English the opportunity. the best source is still colonial India. This has made the enterprise
language. This enabled generations of VernacularTracts collection at the IndiaOl'ficeof scholarslhip fraught with tension. It does
historians of modern India to practise Library. their I cannot believe that the situation is not allow the scholar - the elite historian of'
'craft' without using, and in many cases any better for other Indian languages. the subaltern classes - to writc without think-
without even knowing, a single Indian In fact, the recent move into cultural hlistory, ing reflexively of his or her own relation to
language. The tirst aLttempts by Subaltern in which Subalieirnl Studies historians have the projects o t'power in his or her own society.
Stludies historians, trying to work their way
played a leading part. has meant that this other This is hardly conducive to the writing of
out of this historiographical tradition, were archive is now literally beginning to be put history as it was taught to us. Whatever he
marked, most notably in Ranajit Guha's together, piece by piece, with new the shortcomnings of 'the recent Subalternl
pioneering work, bv innovative techniques to
bibliographies, catalogues, reprographs and Studies, it has at least ensured that simple-
reaid the presence of an insurgent microfilms. The possibilities for subaltern minded histories, based on what Ramnachandra
consciousness from what were most otten history are immense. Only a tiny traction of Guha calls "the li ved experience" of'the people
English-language colonial accounts. But the what was printed in the 19th and 20th centuries (a phrase that would make any decent
question ot finding traces of subaltern voices has entered academic history-writing, even philosopher squirm). will henceforth find
in an Indian-language archive remained for the literary disciplines in the Indian few takers.

3320 Economic and Political Weekly December 23, 1995

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