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Ajaya Bhadra Khanal

Traveling Theory, Fall 2003


Prof. Ivan Karp, Ant 585
Subaltern Studies: Bridging materialism and experience
In his essays On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India, Ranajit
Guha lays out the Subaltern project. The essay reflects two dimensions of the Subaltern
project, much like the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Paul Willis outlined in
Learning to Labor. In this perspective, people are caught in a web of relationship along
two dimensions. The vertical dimension is one of power relations, organized by the state
and dominant political structures (elite in the case of Guha), and the horizontal is one
of cultural relations, organized by cultural forms specific to the structural class position.
This notion is partially reflected in Guhas notion of vertical and horizontal
mobilizations in explaining anti-colonial movements in Indian history. Horizontal
mobilization is derived directly from the paradigm of peasant insurgency, (41).
However, Guha creates a dual category within the subaltern in their horizontal
mobilization. Horizontal mobilization did not only emerge from a class association, it
was also based on traditional organization of kinship and territoriality (40). This
distinction, of whether the mobilization was based on traditional or class
associations, depends on the nature of the consciousness of the people involved (40).
This duality between class consciousness and traditional forms of consciousness is
significant. Firstly, it relates to the cultural aspect of consciousness and experience of
the self, secondly it relates to possibility of political action.
Despite the multiplicity of interests within the subaltern, there are several
categories that bind the different groups as a single category of the subaltern. One

characteristic is resistance against the elite. Another common characteristic is


exploitation, notably, in relation to labor. Guha is aware that these and other distinctive
features did not always appear in a pure state and that the impact of living
contradictions modified them in the course of their actualization in history (41). What is
more important for Guha, however, is that despite their level of purity, such
characteristics created a domain of subaltern politics that is distinct from elite politics
(41). Guhas distinction makes the subaltern as a form of the popular, constantly engaged
in a struggle with the dominant powers. In this sense, subaltern can be easily substituted
for the notion of the popular in Stuart Hall and E. P. Thompson.
The next step of his argument is that the co-existence of these two domains
(subaltern and the elite) indexed the failure of the Indian bourgeoisie to speak for the
nation (41). This statement is significant. Firstly, this leads to a notion of structural
dichotomy (42), which is seen to be a result of the failure of the bourgeoisie to
integrate experience (life and consciousness) of the people. Secondly, it leads to a
concept of articulation. When elements among the indigenous elite (especially the
bourgeois) were able integrate the experience of the people with struggles against
colonialism, it led to some splendid results. And when the efforts of the bourgeoisie to
integrate peoples experience were linked to hegemonic processes, they led to retreats
(42). This concept of articulation helps the Subaltern historians explain diverse and
contradictory moments in Indian history.
Articulation allows a form of solidarity to develop between the bourgeois and the
subalterns. This is especially important because the working class was still not
sufficiently mature in the objective conditions of its social being and in its consciousness

as a class-for-itself, nor was it firmly allied yet with the peasantry, (42). Thus the failures
and successes of Indian political movements are linked to these Marxian and Gramscian
notions of solidarity, now more understandable through Halls idea of articulation. The
problem of this analysis, however, is that the bourgeois class becomes, in Indian
historiography, a classic tragic hero, burdened with the possibility of emancipation of the
Indian peasants and workers, yet subject to hegemonic desires of capitalism. As Guha
argues, the study of this historic failure of the nation to come to its own constitutes the
central problematic of the historiography of colonial India, (43). But in the formulating
the central problematic, Guha already seems to be offering an answer. In the vein of
British Cultural Studies, it is now only a question of finding more examples from history.
Guhas proximity to cultural studies emerges from his goal and method.
Historiography, for Guha, works at two levels of coding and decoding. Firstly, it is about
how historians have coded and decoded history, taking into account the ideological
context in which such activity takes place. At the second level, it is a thick description
(Geertz) or decoding (Thompson) of historical events, combined with historical analysis.
Guha is interested in the historical specificity of rebel consciousness. His essay, The
Prose of Counter Insurgency reflects how Guhas account of history would relate events
to consciousness of agents living in both a material and a cultural world. His method
would, in the case of Santal rebellion, include such things as the rich material of myths,
rituals, rumors, hopes for a Golden Age and fears of an imminent End of the World, all of
which speaks of the self-alienation of the rebel (83). This type of thick-description takes
us very close to Geertz, who takes into account forms of cultural understanding and
representation that provide meaning and motivate people. Historical events, thus, are

always signifiers of the consciousness of the people who enact them, and it seems to be
Guhas intention to make that link between events and consciousness that motivates such
action. Thus, we see in Guha, two aspects. First is an attempt to reach out to
consciousness of the people through a methodology similar to Geertz and E P
Thompson, the other is an aspect of a Marxian-Gramscian model, that situates such
consciousness within a structure of class relations and historical development.
There is, however, another side to Guhas perspective. Subject to seemingly
irrational motivations like religion, sectarianism and militancy, he sees peasant
consciousness as always existing in tension with class consciousness. The movement
from one to another is bi-directional, and they also seem to have a dialectical relationship.
Guha does not view these two elements with neutrality. Like Gramsci, Guha seems to be
wary of the retreats peasant consciousness can take, and all his descriptions are tinged
with a certain sense of disapprobation. For example, localism and territoriality that
exist as traditional vestiges in the peasant life, puts brakes on success of revolutionary
movements (84). Behind the description, we find a certain element of modernity, one that
aspires to a certain form of nationalism. Chakravorty-Spivak also mentions there is an
incipient evolutionism in the Subaltern group, which trying perhaps to avoid a vulgar
Marxist glorification of the peasant, lays the blame on the existing level of peasant
consciousness for the fact that peasant solidarity and peasant power were seldom
sufficient or sustained enough (Chakravarty-Spivak, 6).
In a similar vein, Partha Chatterjees essay More on Modes of Power and the
Peasantry explores different forms of solidarity, and their co-existence in the
backward countries. Chatterjee distinguishes between the communal mode of power,

the feudal mode of power, and the bourgeois mode of power. His purpose in tracing
development of primitive society is to find the typical situation of peasantry in history,
which is a result of the internal development and external political intervention over
centuries leading to the breakdown of segmentary forms of social organization, the
evolution of more developed techno economic forms and more complex social
arrangements of production, the emergence of differentiated and institutionalized forms
of extraction and distribution of the surplus, and the creation of formal institutions of
coercive domination (Chatterjee, 366). He thus seeks to find in Indian societies, residues
of both these modes of power, existing in dialectical opposition (366). In primitive
societies, he argues, the coexistence of contrary principles of political authority
sometimes means an oscillation between two modes (369-70). The implication of their
co-existence is that they open up an entirely new range of possibilities for the ruling
classes to exercise their domination (390). Chatterjees model can also be used to relate
human actions to their motives, or the way in which peoples actions become possible
within a system of complex power relations.

Reference:
Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravarty-Spivak. Selected Subaltern Studies. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988.

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