Social History: Predicaments and Possibilities by Sumit Sarkar

8/13/2019 Social History: Predicaments and Possibilities by Sumit Sarkar

1/9

Social History: Predicaments and PossibilitiesAuthor(s): Sumit SarkarSource: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 20, No. 25/26 (Jun. 22-29, 1985), pp. 1081-1088Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4374537.

Accessed: 14/12/2013 18:15

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Economic and Political Weeklyis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

Economic and Political Weekly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 134.126.78.14 on Sat, 14 Dec 2013 18:15:21 PM
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=epwhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4374537?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4374537?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=epw


2/9

SPECIAL ARTICLESo c i a l History redicaments n d ossibilities

Sumjlt SarkarResearchon modern Indian social history, hereor abroad,cuts a sorry igure. A considerablegap remains betweenour understandingof the basic structutres nd tendencies of the colonial economy and the much-explored historyof political movements in late colonial India. This areaof silence relates to the vast and virtually unexplored terrainof forms of popular consciousness and culture. The gap is related to lack of fruitful dialogue between history,sociology and social anthropology.The failure of grapple seriously withproblems of consciousness and culture leads repeatedly to inadequate oreven trite explanations, in particular the two relatedpoles of economic reductionism and mobilisation by greatleaders/ideologies or skilful manipulators of patron-client linkages.There is need to move towards both 'a materialist and relational concept of culture' and 'a more culturallyembeddedanalysis of the material world' A social history developing through a fruitful, because critical, dialoguewith anthropology can help "inlocating new problems, in seeing old problems in new ways, in an emphasis uponnorms and value systems and upon rituals, in attention to expressivefunctions of forms of riot and disturbance,and upon symbolic expressions of authority, control and hegemony".

OVER the past generation, the focus ofinterest- n modern Indian history hasshifted decisively from viceregal policies,external relations and administrativedevelopments towards an increasinglysophisticatedeconomic historyon the onehand, and studies of the national move-ment, now being broadened rapidly toinclude various forms of popular protest,on the other hand. But even a passingglimpse of current historiographicaltendencies elsewhere brings a painfulawarenessof the relativepoverty so far ofresearches on modern Indian socialhistory.In an influential article published in1971, E J Hobsbawm noted that socialhistory "as an academic specialisation"was "quite new", but commented on "theremarkably lourishing state of the field.It is a good moment to be a social histo-rian. Even those of us who never set outto call ourselves by this name will notwant to disclaim it today". The growingimportance, respectability,and even pre-dominance,pf the genre would be evidentto any reader of the stimulating Britishhistorical periodicals of the 1970s andearly 80s: Past and Present, History

Workshop and Social History can claimpre-eminencehere.The Annales of coursehad acted as the pioneer,while in the USA"social history has graduallycome to sup-plant political history as the dominantconcern of the academy.2 It is symp-tomatic of changing historiographicalmoods or fashionsthat a volume publish.ed in 1982 in honour of E J Hobsbawmdid not have a single article on specialis-ed economic history,eventhough that hadbeen his original field of expertise".3The social historyboom in the West hasgone alongside of shifts in the meaningof that convenient but vague label.Already in 1971, Hobsbawm dismissed

what he described as the "residual viewof social history"-Trevelyan's "historywith the politics left out" as somethingrequiring "no comment". He distinguish-ed two other earlier connotations-lowerclass, labour or peasant protest, conven-tionally often labelled as "social move-ments"' and the social as (an usuallysecondary) adjunct of the economic-tillthe growth of a specialised, quantitative,'hard', economic history enforced a rup-ture between cliometricians and lesserfolk. The real burden of Hobsbawm'spaper, however,had beena call to broaden"social history" into "the history ofsociety".The debt here to Marc Bloch andLucien Febvre'sprogramme for 'integral','global' or 'total' history was obvious andacknowledged. The two leading featuresof the recent boom in social history havebeen in fact a tremendous broadening inthe scope of historical research to covermultifarious aspects of the lived'experi-ence of the past, bringing within its scopenumerous dimensions and themes leftonly yesterday o antiquarians, folkloristsand anthropologists, and an opennesstowards the concepts and methods ofother social sciences.Among these, socialanthropology today can claim somethinglike a primacy so far as the current debtsof historians are concerned.4 The shiftshavebeen extensiveand rapid,so that evenan article like Keith Thomas 'HistoryandAnthropology' publishedin 1963, conveysa curiously dated flavour today: anthro-pology then was still being identified bythis Britishhistorian with structuralfunc-tionalism with no reference at all to Levi-Strauss or structurallinguistics, and edu-cation, family and the history of mentali-ties were described as subjects hardlyexplored so far in Britain.The expansion, as one would expect,has been not without tensions, debates,

and sharp antinomies, some of which Iintend to-touch upon and try to relate toour own historiographical problems alittle later. For the moment it might beconvenientto remind ourselvesthat 'total'history has been used in a number of dif-ferent senses, not all of them of equalpotential value, relevance or practicalityin the context of existing source materialand resources in India. It can imply ef-forts to define entire epochs and/or theirsuccession over time: civilisations, 'tradi-tional' as distinct from 'modernising'societies (a sociological-cum-politicalscientist vogue now happily somewhat indecline), modes of production and socialformations. The latter,Marxian tradition,despite repeated vulgarisations to analmost equivalent extent by believers andtraducers alike, has retained a coherenceand heuristic power unequalled by itsrivals. Fruitfulwhen related maginativelyand effectively to specific empirical con-texts, such a conception of totality candegenerate into scholastic labelling exer-cises in lesser hands. The most effectiveMarxist nterventions n academichistory-writing have usually been at a somewhatlower level of abstrection and ambition.We may admire (with qualification) PerryAnderson, but would have been reallyimpoverished without Thompson, Hill,Hilton or Hobsbawm.With the partial exception of MarcBloch's "Feudal Society",6 the bulk ofthe classic work of the Annales schooloperated with a somewhat different con-cept of l'histoire integrale:the study of aregion over the longue duree, hopefully'total' in scope, proceedingsystematicallythroughthe various 'times' 'geographical''social', and 'individual' relevant for thehistorian.7 Braudel on the Mediterra-nean, and LeRoy Ladurie on Languedochave beeii the two outstanding exmplars

Economic and Political WeeklyVol XX, Nos 25 and 26, June 22-29, 1985 1081

This content downloaded from 134.126.78.14 on Sat, 14 Dec 2013 18:15:21 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/9

June 22-29, 1985 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLYof this mode of history-writing, whichbecame associated for a time in the 1950sand 60s with a denigration of political,narrative or episodic (evenementielle)history.Event, agency,and process tendedto be marginalised in the quest for long-term-structures, ecological and demo-graphic, and Ladurie even talked of a'history that stands still' till the 18th-19thcentury break, coming surprisingly andperilously close to modernisation theo-rists.8 It may be doubted whether suchworks have really been as 'total' as theyhad set out to be9 and in any case wesadly lack in India the necessary infra-structure of "a prodigious body of arti-cles, papers, books, publications, surveys,some' purely historical, others no lessinteresting, written by specialists inneighbouring disciplines" which Braudelused to writ) about "the Mediterraneanand the lands illumined by its glow".10

It is 'total' history in a third sense,however,which I feel might provethe mostfruitful and realisable in the Indian con-text: focused on a fairly well-definedtheme, problem, or even the once-abused'event' or 'episode', but trying to study itin depth, and looking at its variousdimen-sions. Many of the more recent works inthe Annales tradition have themselvesmoved in this direction, includingLadurie's two best-sellers, "Montaillou"and "Carnivalat Romans".The currentlyvery fashionable history of mentalite stilloften seeks the longue duree, but choosesfor intensive study one aspect of humansensibility in its bid to explore the "ideasconcerning childhood, sexuality, familyand death ... the attitudes of ordinarypeople towards everyday life . . ."." Itthus seeks to implement a programmeoutlined by Lucien Febvre more than ageneration back.'2 Independent of eachother, contemporary feminism and newtechniques of demographic researchhaveled to a vast arfdextremelyfruitful expan-sion of the field of family history andwomen's studies in Western Europe andAmerica: once again anthropology hasbecome a major influence here.13 Thepartial rehabilitation of l'histoireevenementielle-what Lawrence Stonerecentlydescribed as the "revivalof narra-tive"'4 has had as one of its significantconsequences a new mode of writing poli-tical history, no longer an outcaste fromtotal history but transformed into a"historyin depth by becoming the historyof power", with a new focus on the"semiologyof power", nvestigatingsigns,symbols, and a variety of non-writtendocumentation. 15 A study of rulinggroups, of changing patternsand symbolsof domination, or even of diplomacy, it

needs to be emphasised, can be as genuirneand valuable a work of social history asresearchon popular movements or popui-lar culture. The identification of lower-class protest as 'social', as distinguishedfrom the history of elites to which theterm 'political' has to be confined, is anunfortunatelydeep-seated historical habitwhich is unhelpful and indeed illogical.'6'Social history' cannot really have aseparate domain, marked off from 'eco-nomic' or 'political'; the differentia rrmustconsist in approach and methods, notnecessarily subject matter.

In the hands of the best practitionersof social history today, practically anyevent or aspect of past experience cainbemade to yield far-reaching insights. Thetestimonybefore the Inquisition of a total-ly obscure 16th century Italian rniller,rituals and festivals of inversiorn, theFrench Charivari and the English 'roughmusic', serve as starting points for fasci-nating reconstructions of the world ofpopular culture. 7 Food riots becomeindicators of a partially autonomous'moral economy' of the crowd.18 The'black act' of 1723.and stucdiesof crimeand law provide pivots for a major recon-struction of 18th century English historywhich turns Namierism on its head.19The diaries of A J Munby and HannahCullwick, minor Victorian poet and hisservant-cum-mistress, lluminate intricatenuances of gender and class relations.20The prints of Hogarth, or New Yearfesti-vities in remote Newfoundland villages,lead on to major theoretical discussionsof concepts of culture and class.2'

IIResearch on modern Indian socialhistory;hereor abroad, cuts a rathersorryfigure if set besides such abundance.Recently an applicant for a college job inDelhi, askedto name a single good generalwork on the social history of modernIndia, replied that there is no such book.The selection committee, I am told, was

dissatisfied with the answer:as sometimeshappens, here the experts werewrong andthe candidate right. The 'residual' ap-proach, dismissed so cavalierly byHobsbawm, still flourishes among us. Asurveyof 18thcenturysocial life publishedin 1976 hailed G M Trevelyan's "SocialHistory" as a "brilliant example"' andwent on to give scattered details aboutreligious sects, education, caste, farnilylife, the position of women, and various"social evils" before embarkingon a morecongenial summary of economic condi-tions.22 For the 19th century, there hasoften been a more surprising, indeedpossibly unique, redefinition: social

history is tacitly equated with the historyof 'social reform' initiated by and confin-ed overwhelmingly to educated 'middleclass' groups, set against the backgroundof Britisheducational and 'social'policies.Thus V A Narain's "Social History ofModern India" (1972) deals successivelywith Company "social policy", missiona-ries and "humanitarianism" and Englisheducation, followed by nine chapters onsocial reform movements.23R C Majum-dar's "History of Modern Bengal" (1978)seems to promise a little more, with itslong chapters on Religion and Societybased on extracts from contemporaryjournals collected by Benoy Ghosh. Theabsence of any theoretical framework,however, eavesus in the end with bits andpieces of scattered information.24 Themost eninent of historians thus seemcuriously uncertain in the domain ofsocial history when they ventureout of thesafe confines of sati, widow-remarriage,Brahmoism or 'Hindu revival'. Similarassumptions, confusing a not-unimportantbut undeniably limited sector with apotentially vast field, underiie manyUniversity syllabi on 'social history'including that of my own, though fortu-nately this has been ignored in practiceand is now under revision.Prospects appear somewhat brighterasregards the two other sub-types of tradi-tional social history distinguished byHobsbawm: the social as an adjunct ofthe economic, and studiesof popularpro-test. A number of historians havetried towork outwards from analysisof economicstructures of particular regions to chang-ing social and political relationships:RavinderKumar'sstu-dyof WesternIndiaand some of the articles in his recently-published "Essays on the Social Historyof Modern India" can serve as good ex-amples of this genre.25 Numerous andvaried attempts have been made to relatenationalism to its social and economic'basis': educated 'middleclass' grievances,bourgeois upthrust, elite competition,material interests of local patron-clientnetworks, the contrasting implications ofwet and dry farmning nd the emergencein certain areas of rich peasant groups.26In recent years there has also been anotable effort to develop a distinct sub-discipline of urban history.27 And'history from below' flourishestoday,witha large numberof publicationsor researchin pirogress on protest movements oftribals, peasants, and (to a lesser extent)industrial workers.28Attempts at 'total'histc'ries of whole regions over longishtime-spansremain nhibitedby inadequatesource materials and lack of a necessaryinfrastructure of micro-studies, but aContinued after Review of Agriculture

1082



4/9

Continued f-om page 1082work like Chris Bayly's "Rules, Towns-men, and Bazars" does representa heroicand fascinating effort to transcend tradi-tional barriersbetween the economic, thesocio-cultural and the political.29A numberof major limitations persist.A considerable gap still remains betweenour understandingof the basic structuresand tendenciesof the colonial economy-considerably deepened today by recentresearch-and the much-explored historyof political movements in late colonialIndia, generally subsumed, a little tooreadily perhaps, under the rubric of na-tionalism. More precisely, this area ofsilence relates to the vast and virtuallyunexplored terrain of forms of popularconsciousnessand culture,as distinctfromideological currentswithin the intelligen-tia on which there has been considerablework of a ratherold-fashioned, 'intellec-tual history' type.30The gap is obviouslyrelated also to the very evident lack offruitful dialogue between history,sociology and social anthropology. Oursub-continent providedthe subject-matterfor some of the earliest classics of anthro-pological field-work-most notablyRadcliffe-Brown's study of Andamanislanders-and yet it is only quite recentlythat professional historians have startedgetting interested in tribal societies (andeven then, mainly in tribal rebellions).Caste for long remained almost a tabooword among many of us. It occurs onlythree times in the index of R P Dutt's"India Today",3'and-to indulge for amoment in an auto-critique-I feel nowthat a serious lacunae in my study of theSwadeshi movement in Bengal consistedin my inability or unwillingness to relatethe data on 'caste movements' of Mahi-shyas, Namasudras, and others to myoverall analytical framework.32Such silences have had manifold con-sequences. Not only do large tracts ofhuman experience remain unexplored:studies of women, for instance, only justbeginning to attract serious historicalattention, and even so somehow automa-tically relegatedto women colleagues andusually confined to limited themes likeeducation and social reform. The absenceof genuine social history also produceslow-order explanation even in apparentlymuch-trodden areas.It is not really possi-ble, for example, to bridge the gap bet-ween colonial structureand nationalist orother protest by meansof an insufficientlyanalysed, rigid, and over-generalconceptof 'class', abstracted from any real empi-rical analysis of the concrete problems ofclass-formation through conflict betweenliving human beings in groups.33 Such'Marxism' is all too-easily 'refutable',fortextbook or programmatic formulasregarding he 'national' bourgeoisie or theworking class soon reveal their inade-quacies when confrontedby micro-studies

bringing out the reality of enormousvariations, the persistenceand even refur-bishing of 'traditional' ties of caste andreligion, or the importance often of ver-tical patron-client linkages. It may beargued, further, that a historiographylimited to conventional tools and sourceshas an almost built-intendencyto becomemore elitist as it turnsmore sophisticated,and that this has been happening in ourfield: for privatepapers, accepted now-a-days as the most 'authentic' source of all,are bound to have an overwhelminglyofficial or upper-class origin in a largelyilliterate country.

So faras studies of popular movementsare concerned, the failure to grappleseriously with problems of consciousnessand culture eads repeatedly o inadequateor eventrite explanations, n particular hetwo related poles, trenchantly and effec-tively attacked recently by RanajitGuha,of economic reductionism and mobilisa-tion by great leaders/ideologies or skilfulmanipulators of patron-client linkages.34Rebellion is presented either "as an in-stinctive and almost mindless response tophysical suffering of one kind oranother",35or simply a matter of effec-tive organisation from the top: both tendto exclude the insurgent as the subject ofhistory. 36 It is not that economicpressures, outsider leadership interven-tions, or even on occasion factional link-ages are unimportantor not worthexplor-ing, but surely we need to rememberThompson's withering comment about asimplehunger-protestnexus being as self-evidentand as limitedas the fact "thattheonset of sexualmaturitycan be correlatedwith a greaterfrequency of sexual activi-ty'37 As for automaticity of the secondtype, otherwise inert masses respondingto politico-ideological stimuli, or cohertsof 'clients' meekly trooping off at thecommand of their 'patrons: Thompson'sanalysis of 18thcentury English 'patern-alism' and 'deference' appear again ex-tremelyrelevant:deference"couldbe seenfrom below as being one part necessaryself-preservation, one part the calculatedextraction of whatever could be ex-tracted".38Patronage in other words canbe a far more complex, nuanced, andvaryingconcept than imagined by the so-called 'Cambridge school'.

The virtual absence of research onpopular culturecreates problemseven forradical-mindedhistorians who would liketo avoid any ascription of inertness orpassivity to tribals, peasants, or workers.Repeatedly evident here are signs ofromanticisation, anachronism, and teleo-logy:an implicitassumptionbouta kindof innatepopularmilitancy rrebellious-ness;aconcentrationn moments f openrebellionalone; tendeiiciesto view allmanifestationsof plebian initiativeorautonomy s laudable ndprogressive;he

ascription of present-day political andsocio-economic concerns to leaders likeTitu Mir, Sidhu and Kanhu, or BirsaMunda;39and persistent, at times almostdesperate, attempts to relate all popularrebellions to general currepts of anti-imperialism or social change. Suchromanticisation appears particularly in-appropriate in a coujntrywhich has justwitnessedthe pndopttedly plebianappealof Bhindraqwaleas well as the 'popular'Hindu communalist backlash followingthe assassination of Indira Gandhi.To make the discussion more concrete,I would liketo take up now two examplesfromareaswhich have been centralto myown teaching and researchwork:popular,more specifically peasant, nationalism inthe 20th century, and the intellectualhistory of 19th century Bengal. In bothfields one notices a repeatedtendency forinterestinghistoriographicaldepartures oget bogged down in old and sterile pole-

mics, and it is such mental blocks thathave made me increasingly aware of theneed for the development of a genuinesocial history.'Subaltern studies', with its critique ofall varieties of 'elitism', whether col-onialist, nationalist, or even 'Marxist', tsfocus on lower class initiatives, and itspioneering efforts tp tackle problems ofpopular consciousness with the aid oftools adapted from anthropology andstructural linguistics, does represent amajor breakthrough in our history-writing. A not-uncriticalreviewerhas even

compared the possible impact of RanajitGuha's "Elementary Aspects" with thatof D)D Kosambi a generation back. Yetmuch of the debate provoked by thisdepartureseems to have already acquireda certain staleness, an incapacity to pin-point the real problems. Personally I amneither provokednor particularlyenthral-led by the term 'subaltern'.'Plebian' (asused by E P Thompson for 18th centuryEngland) or Ipppular' could have alsoservedmuch the same purpose, relatedtothe nced for some kind of omnibuscategory in pre-capitalistsituations whereclass-formation is still relatively nchoate.'Subaltern'does have&ertainadvantage,however,insofar as it is used to pinpointbasic relationships of power,of domina-tion and subordination-relationshipswhich may often be cross-cutting, involy-ing distinction of caste and genderas wellas of class, and in which the 'subaltern'of one specific context may well be simul-taneously the dominant group in another.An obvious examplemight be an exploitedintermediate caste male peasant employ-ing low-caste landless labour and lordingit overhis wife and children.40uchter-minologicalssuesapart, t is unfortunatethat the subalternstudiesenterprisesoftenbeingviewed hrough he veryoldprism of an organisation/autonomy

1083



5/9

June 22-29, 1985 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY

debate, endemic in Indian Marxist circlessince the 1920s, with Guha and some ofhis associates charged with the heresy of'populism', of denying the role of van-guard elements. At times we seem to begoing back to the well-establishedGandhi-as-great-man/tGandhi-the-great-betrayer-syndrome, and the dust raised by suchsterile debates only obscures some of thereal problems with Guha's approach: theextentof relevanceof somewhatsimplisticbinary models, for example, or thedangers of a certain abstraction fromspecific contexts of time and region in-volved in a quest for "elementaryaspects 41The tendency for newendeavours to getsucked back into old debates has shownitself also in the controversies about therelevance of the 'renaissance' model forunderstanding 'middle class' intellectualhistory of 19th century Bengal. Some ofus had argued that the analogy was inap-propriate, based as it was on a unilinearconcept of historical development whichgave inadequate attention to the peculiartwisted logic of colonialism. The searchfor distant progenitors of present-dayvalues, most notably in Rammohun,represented a kind of 'Whig' interpreta-tion which had to be overcoma if wewanted to avoid the pitfalls of anachro-nism and teleology.42 Attempts weremade to situate Rammohun, David Hare,YoungBengal, and Vidyasagarmore firm-ly within their specific contexts.43 Butmany mistook all this as some kind ofexercise n debunking or iconoclasm, andsoon we were back to a great/little mandebate, about the 'role', 'progressive' orotherwise, of particular movements orpersonalities.

I have come to feel increasingly thatsuch polemical bogs can be avoided onlythrougha major broadeningof approach,sources and methods, a leap towardsgen-uine social history. The organisation/autonomy debate in the history of massnationalism, for instance, can be trans-formed if re-read in terms of a common'language', permitting a communicationand yet susceptible to a varietyof nuanceof idiom, style and meaning as differentsocial strata interpreted it in the light oftheir specific and often conflicting in-terests and traditions. I have in mindsomething along the lines of W H Sewell'srecent fascinating study of the 'languageof labour' in late 18th and early19th century France, in which the "cor-porate" idiom is revealed to have beencapable of a multitude of subtle shiftsover both time and social space." Thereis considerable scope here for methods ofsemiological analysis, having as their

suibject-matter oth verbal and non-verbalcommunication: the rich ambience, forinstance, acquired by signs like charkha,khadi or salt, the importance of whichsurely far transcended the immediatematerialgairns hey might havebrought totheir patriotic users.45Such approachesmay give us new insights into the strengthand strange persistence of Gandhi's ap-peal, despite numerous 'betrayals', byfocusing on its deeply religious nature,itsdominant idiom of sacrifice and renun-ciation.46 The complex intermingling-indeed, often the near-identification-ofthe language of patriotism with that ofreligion demands a subtler, analysis thanthat offered by assumptionsabout distinct'secular' and 'revivalist'trends, with 'na-tionalism' a thing apart from 'communa-lism',and politiciainsonly 'using' religion.

Starting from a specific area, move-rnent, or even perhaps a single well-documented incident, analysisof this typemay go very much deeper: many of therumours about the Mahatma as miracle-worker collected by Shahid Amin fromGorakhpur, for instance,47 can makesense only if placed in the context of tradi-tions of popular culture. The problem ofinteraction between levels of nationalismleads on, therefore, o that of levels withinsociety, culture, and religion-a problemwhich in the context of Hinduism hasalready provided the staple for a centraland recurrent debate in social anthropo-logy.48Historians need to participate inthat debate, and make their own specificcontributions to it, keeping in mindE P Thompson's warningthat while enter-ing into a necessary and fruitful dialoguewith anthropology, history cannot ceaseto remain "adisciplineof contextand pro-cess".49 Similar problems, about thevalidity of elite/popular distinctions inculture, as well as the need to recogniseboth the possibilities of communicationsacross social strata and of autonomousvariations or interpretations, have cometo occupy a central place in the concernsof social historians in many parts of theworld. 0

The somewhat arid field of the nine-teenth century 'renaissance',for long leftto middle class self-praiseor flagellation,can also be transformed if brought intorelationshipwith this central problematic.I feel that a close readingof the multitudeof texts left by our nineteenth centuryworthies-religious treatises, literaryworks, autobiographies, he richcollectionof vernacular tracts at the Indian OfficeLibrary-can still revealunexpected trea-sures, particularly if brought into juxta-position with evidence concerning earlier

religious traditions and contemporarypopular culture. Recently I have beentrying to do some work on one such text,extremely well known in Bengal but un-touched so far by professional historians:the Ramakrishna-Kathamrita, remark-able, indeedunique, for its verbatimrecor-ding of actual conversation, for a periodof some six years, 1881-1886,between thesaint and his disciples. A conversation,moreover,which representeda leap acrosssocial space, for Ramakrishnawas a rusticBrahman with a family holding of onlyone-and-a-half bighas and a little formallearning, his disciples by the early 1880sentirelyeducatedCalcuttabhadralok.TheKathamrita provides an index to chang-ing bhadralok mentalities-for Rama-krishna acquired a middle class clientaleonly in the later 1870s and early 1880s,more than twenty years after he hadsettled at Dakshineshwar-and more in-terestingly, some clues for understandingthe mental world of rural Bengal.51Assuch, it can be a valuable supplement tothe efforts being made today to re-construct peasant consciousness frommoments of rebellion alone.

As the conversation of a man involvedin a process of social ascent, theKatharnrita rovesto be a valuable ext forprobing into basic relationships of power.A central image in it is the richly am-biguous figure of the babu or baro-manush: living in idleness, chewing panwithout care,with well-trimmed mousta-ches, far awayfrom thoughts of Iswara;52and yet someone who has to be pleased,whose patronge is essential for survival,whose heart can be won throughdevotionand love, and who often becomes strange-ly homologous with divinity itself.53Ramakrishna's ttitudes towardsauthorityinextricably combine subservience and,not exactly revolt, but certainly resent-ment: a reminder,perhaps, that a binarymodel of subordination/revolt is notalwayshelpful. He loved to recallthe daysof his "madness"or ecstacywhen he "hadno fearof big people"'and had even slap-ped his patron Rani Rashmoni once forbeing inattentive during a devotionalsong.54In one, isolated, but remarkable,conversation, Ramakrishna identifiedhimself for a brief moment with theapocalyptic Kalki-avatar: "A Brahman'sson-he knows nothing-suddenly ahorse and sword will come .. "I' Andyet Ramakrishnaalso recalledhow he hadbecome sure of his stature as a holy manonly after the zamindars of his villagehome paid their respectsto him.56Struckdown by cancer at the height of hisprestigeamong the bhadralok,he pleadedwith the doctor: "Babu, please make me

1084



6/9

well ... Babu Babu You must cureme" like any peasant or poor man beg-ging a favour from a social superior.5'Subservienceand resentmentarereconcil-ed in Ramakrishna through bhakti,representing a simultaneous internalisa-tion and humanisingof adhikar-bheda,orhierarchy,social as well as religious. In aseries of homologous parables, the socialinferior-servant, poor man's son,client-is shown as obtaining the favourof the king, baromanushor babu throughbhakti and seba (devotion and service), attimes brushing aside the amlas or inter-mediaries who try to block his way.58Bhakti, as perhaps through much ofIndianhistory, seems to providea kind of'living-space' for the downtrodden: aliving-spacewhich is also a trap, for it hashelpedhierarchyand oppressionto endurebymaking them appear less unendurable.The servant can hope to relate himselfthrough bhakti to the babu, clearly por-trayed as a patron of a 'traditional' or'paternalistic' type-but there is inRamakrishna a second kind of model ofsubordination, much less acceptable:chakri or office-work, implying dasatya(bondage, slavery)under a manib (master,employer). What seems to make chakriintolerable for Ramakrishna was its con-notation of an impersonalcash nexus,em-bodied above all in new, rigorous, disci-pline of time. He once told a disciple:"Yourface seems to have a dark shadowupon it. That's because you are workingin an office. In the office you have tohandlemoney,keepaccounts, do so muchother work; you have to be alert all thetime"59One is irresistibly reminded ofE P Thompson's seminal essay on thetransition from peasant-artisan to indus-trial time, and the plebian hostility to thechange-over to the more rigorous routineof capitalist society.i' In nineteenth cen-tury Bengal, it needs to be added, wherethe few factorieswereowned by foreignersand employed mainly non-Bengalees, andthere was no capitalist breakthrough inagriculture, the principle locii for theimported ideas of bourgeois time anddiscipline became the office and the newtype of schools and colleges.6'

Space forbids any further explorationhere of the unexpected riches of theKathamrita62but I must add that it-together with Lilaprasanga, the standardbiography of Ramakrishna-is repletewith references to popular religious andcultural traditions which become mean-ingful only when readin conjunction withdata collected by folkloristsand anthropo-logists. Sacrilegious hough it must sound,the intertwinning of submission andresentment in Ramakrishna's discourseremind one of James Freeman's life-history of Muli, a Bauripimp of a villagenear Bhubaneswar whose "ambivalentresponses reflect respectfor, affection for,

resentment of and rebellion against thesame person".63III

So far I have pleaded for a gi-eateropenness towardsanthropology anJ.moreawareness among us all of the work onsocial history going on in other countries.To avoid any possible misinterpretation,I would like to add now that I do notmean by this any wholesale borrowing,ora surrenderof the necessaryautonomy ofour own discipline. Awareness s requiredpreciselyto avoid being swept awayby the'latest' intellectual fashions, which in anycase usuallyreachour countryafter a con-siderable ime-lag,and then tend to persistlong after they have become outmodedelsewhere.64It is necessary to recall, therefore, thatthe social history boom in the West hasbeen accompanied by considerable, attimes extremely trenchant, criticism. Ayoung historian in 1979 went so far as todeclare, in a conscious reversal ofHobsbawm, that "this is a bad time to bea social historian".65Both the greatpossibilities and the realproblems of a social history impregnatedwith anthropology can be brought intofocus through the basic concept of'culture'.Anthropologists havebeen usingit to signify 'awhole way of life',the com-plex of interlocking institutions, customs,values and myths revealedthrough field-work: as Keith Thomas argued twentyyears ago, the resultant perspective oftotality has often given "a better impres-sion of what l'histoire integralemight be"than much conventional history-writing.66Through anthropology, and to-day social history influenced by it, "beha-viours and beliefs traditionally seen assenseless, irrelevant, or at best marginalcuriosities (for instance, magic and super-stition) havebeen analysed at last as validhuman experiences".67 Yet a dialoguewith anthropology, as E P Thompson re-minded a session of this Congress n 1977,was necessary but bound to be diffi-cult.68The Genoveses, themselves majorsocial historians, have bitterly attackedmuch contemporary social history for itsabstraction from political and economicstructures and processes, for threateningto develop into a kind of neo-antiquariandescription of everyday life.69The ghostof Trevelyan's"history with the politicsleft out" has proved much more difficultto exorcise than Hobsbawm had ex-pected.70Ranajit Guha'sinsistence on thecentralityof the 'political' derives ts valuefrom an awareness of such dangers, andcan be of help provided the 'political' isconstruedin termsof a varietyof complexattitudes and actions generatedby funda-mental relationships of domination and

subordination, and not identified onlywith open rebellion.

At a more general level, structuralfunctionalism-still the dominant inIndian anthropology-does raise seriousproblems so far as most historians, andparticularlyMarxists, areconcerned. Theemphasis on 'functional' integration,cohesion and solidarity, derived from acombination of Durkheim with field-experience among (mostly) primitivegroups, often appears as irrelevant oreven some kind of prettifying neo-traditionalism in studies of moredeveloped societies, shot through as theyare by sharp conflicts of rank, caste orclass. To many historians, it might makemore sense to interpretculture as a 'wholeway of conflict' rather han an undifferen-tiated 'whole way of life' common in thesame way to all members of a society.7'What adds considerably to the problemis that dominant schools of anthropology,structuralist as much as structural-functionalist, have a built-in preferencefor synchrony over diachrony, for more-or-less unchanging and unif6rm struc-tures, and not processes or events; languerather than parole, in Saussurean termi-nology. Some of Levi-Strauss' echniquesmay be helpful for us, but on the wholean anthropologist likeCliffordGeertzhasmore to offer to historians, with his questfor 'thick description' of a specific situa-tion, akin to an imaginative literaryreading of texts rather than a formal'decoding' operation.72 And I feel thatthere is a lot to learn from Carlo Ginz-burg's recentmethodological essay on the'conjectural paradigm', proceedingthrough a ferretting-out of 'clues' as theapproach most suited for history, whicd"remains a science of a very particularkind, irremediallybased on the concrete".Unlikethe naturalsciences,history cannotreallyafford to abstractfrom the qualita-tive and the individual,73 nd perhaps thesame warning is applicable to the kind ofanthropology most relevant or historians.The convergence-despite all problemsand tensions-between some of the mostinteresting types of anthropology andhistory today is illustrated by the similarconclusions arrivedat, quite independent-ly of each other and through work inutterly different styles and intellectualtraditions, by E P Thompson in his"Poverty of Theory" (some polemicalexcessesapart) and PierreBourdieu in his"Outline of a Theory of Practice".Boththe polemic against Althusser and the cri-tique of structuralist and structural-functionalist anthropology focus on theproblem of structure and agency, funda-mental to the social sciences since at leastVico onwards:history is made by humanbeings, yet the products of their labourand thought repeatedly acquire an exter-nality, an objectified or alienated

character'which dominates the makersand rn-)tifies the cultural into the1085



7/9

June22-29, 1985 ECONOMIC AND POLITICALWEEKLYnatural.74 A 'scientific' and 'objective'focus on structures alone involves there-fore living in and a surrenderto a fetishi-cised world. In anthropology, Bourdieuhas argued, 'model' and 'rule' have to bereplaced by 'strategy', and he tries toarriveat a dialecticalunderstandingof thetension between structure and agencythrough his basic concept of 'habitus'.75The writingsof Thompson or Bourdieuand the current "state of play" betweenhistory and anthropology76 onvey simul-taneously a vivid awareness of the richpossibilities of work in a creativeMarxiantradition, and a sense of acute dissatis-faction with much that passes under thatlabel. Thompson's books and essays arereplete with instances of his capacity togive "familiar sociological concepts ...a new dialectical ambivalence: an 'act ofgiving' must be seen simultaneously as an'act of getting', a social consensus as aclass hegemony,social control (very often)as class control . ;77 Bourdieu situateshimself in a philosophical tradition goingback to Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach"and yet both would not doubt be regardedas heretical by many.Marxism of a certain type has acquiredconsiderable influence over Indian histo-riographyin recent years, and today evendominates a number of areas. But onesometimes fears whether the success hasnot been too easy, and due largely to theweakness and lack of sophistication ofalternative traditions.78Certainly Marx-ism has often reigned among us in consi-derablysimplified forms: a rigid, virtuallya priori conception of class-interest,deriv-ed automatically from economic condi-tions; and unquestioned acceptance offormulas of base and superstructure;aithin the primacyof the 'economic',balancedby the usual ritual concessions to inter-action and relative autonomy; a conse-quent playing down of problems ofculture and consciousness. Yet s'eriousdoubts have been raised elsewhere aboutthe value of the base-superstructuremodel. It was only an analogy, after all,and byno means the only one which Marxexperimented with;79and in any case it isimportantto remember hat reallyoriginalthinkers often have difficulties in convey-ing the full richness of their ideas througha language necessarily borrowed fromothers (in the case of the founders ofMarxism, Hegelian, followed by positi-vistic). Again, it is surely impermissibleto identify the mode of production withthe 'economy'. since it is very difficult toconceive of any system of productionsrelation abstractedfrom culture,law, andpolitics, i e, elements of the so-called'superstructure.10 One of Marx's mostprofound insights was precisely that therigorous separation and 'primacy' of the

economicdomnain'economicman')wasa constructof bourgeois society andideolosy.Thuswe needto move owards oth"amaterialistand relational concept ofculture"nd"amoreculturallfymbeddedanalysis of the material world".81Asocialhistorydevelopinghrougha fruit-ful, becausecritical,dialoguewith an-thropology anhelpus "in locatingnewproblems,n seeingold problemsn newways, in an emphasisupon norms andvaluesystemsanduponrituals, n atten-tion to expressiveunctionsof formsofriotanddisturbance,nd uponsymbolicexpressions of authority,control andhegemony".82feel thatit is in suchwaysthat the veryrichGramscian onceptofhegemony an develop nto a significanttool forhistorical nalysis, ndberescuedfromthe danger,whichthreatenst nowthat it has becomequitefashionable, fbecomingyet anotherclicheor formula.A Marxist istoriographyhich s.contentonlywiththenarrowlyeconomnic'rthe'political' s asemasculatedsmuchcon-temporaryMarxistpractice, ondemnedin the absence of effective counter-hegemonic trategieso oscillatebetweeneconomism nd'sectarian'dventuresr'reformist' pportunismn politics.Exploringever-newrealms of livedexperience,ocialhistory oday s contri-buting o a realisationhat"the eeminglymostintimatedetailsof private xistenceare actuallystructuredby largersocialrelations",83ringing istorymuchnearerto its writersor readers n an interactionthat candeepen ritical warenessf boththe past and of ourselves.Focusingon"cultural and moral mediations ... theway ... material experience are handled... culturally",84 t enters a world inwhichagency, alues,or moralchoicecanneverbeentirely ubmergedn a moreorlesspassivecontemplation f structures.Such awareness s not, however, lwaysverycomfortable,and this may help toexplainomeof thesuspicion ndhostilitywhichsocial historyseems to arouseattimes.I am reminded f a discussiononsyllabusrevisionthat took place somemonthsback in myUniversity,n whicha very young teacher, passionatelypleading ora greater mphasis n socialhistory,argued hat history to be reallymeaningfulouldnotremain nconnectedwithhis everydayife, his relationswithparents,loved ones, or neighbours.Asenioracademic ulledhimupsharplyorbecomingso "individualistice.do feel,however, hat a historydetachedfromsuchconcerns,evenwhen t is radicalorMarxist n appearance,anneverbecomemore han-at best-a pleasant cademicdiversion,or-at worst-a way of enter-ing the rat-racefor jobs, promotions,.and

patronage. Toadapt and expand a sloganof the women's liberation movement, 'thepersonal is the political" and it mustbecome the historical, too.Notes

Rrhis aper was first presented as the author'sPresidentialAddress to the Modern India Sec-tion of the Forty-Fifth Session of the IndianHistory Congress at Annamalai on December27-29, 1984.]1 Specialised journals in social history,Hobsbawm remarked, were rare till Com-parative Studies in Society and History(1958). E J Hobsbawm, 'From Social His-tory to the History of Society', Daedalus,V, 100, Winter 1971.2 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and EugeneGenovese, 'The Political Crisis of Social

History:A MarxianPerspective', ournalofSocial History, x, 1976; reprintedin Ibid,"Fruits of Merchant Capital: SlaveryandBourgeois Propertyin the Rise and Expan-sion of Capitalism",OUP, 1983.

3 Raphael Samuel and Gareth StedmanJones, ed, "Culture,Ideology and Politics:Essays for Eric Hobsbawm", HistoryWorkshop Series, London, etc, 1982.4 Thus Lawrence Stone talks about "thereplacementof sociology and economicsbyanthropology as the most,influential of thesocial sciences". 'The Revival of Narrative:Reflections on a New Old History',Past andPresent, No 85, November 1979.5 KeithThomas, 'Historyand Anthropology',Past and Present, No 24, April 1963.6 Possibly influenced to some extentby Marx-ian conceptions-see Andre Burguierre,'The Fate of the History of Mentalities inthe Annales',ComparativeStudiesin Socie-ty and History, Vol 24, 1982.7 FernandBraudel, "The Mediterraneanandthe Mediterranean World in the Age ofPhilip 11",VolumeI, Fontana, 1976.Prefaceto the First Edition, p 21.8 As well as to a remarkablyuncritical ap-preciationof Fogel and Engerman's"Timeon the Cross".E Le Roy Ladurie, 'Histor)that Stands Still' (1973), reprinted in his"The Mind and Method of the Historian",Harvester, 1981.9 "The Mediterranean"after all, will remainimmortal not for any major revaluationsofthe Renaissance, the Reformation or the

battle of Lepanto, but for its superb andpoetic evocation-of "man'scontact withtheinanimate",,inwhich the flowers "come backevery spring, the flocks of sheep migrateevery year ... the ships sail on a real seathat changes with the seasons", Braudel,op cit, p 27.10 Ibid, p 18.11 Patrick H Hutton, 'The History of Men-talities: The New Map of CulturalHistory',Historyand Theory,VolXX, 1981.See also,

1086



8/9

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, 'RecentHistorical'Discoveries",Daedalus, Vol 106,1977;Stephen Wilson, 'Deathandthe SocialHistorian Some RecentWritings n Frenchand English', Social History, V, 3, 1980;Philippe Aries, "The Hour of Ou.rDeath"Peregine, 1981; and, for more criticalassessments, Andre Burguierre,op cit; andStuartClark, 'FrenchHistorians and EarlyModernPopularCulture,Past and Present,No 100, 1983.12 Lucien Febvrein 1941 called for "a wholeseries of studies noneof whichhaveyetbeendone, and as long as they have not beendone there will be no real history possible.No history of love, just remember that. Wehave no history of death, or of cruelty.Wehave no history of joy .. .". 'Sensibilityand History:How to Reconstitutethe Emo-tional Life of the Past' in Peter Burke, ed,"A New Kind of History:From the Writingsof Lucien Febvre, London, 1973, p 24.13 EllenRoss and RaynaRapp, 'Sex and Socie-ty: A Research Note from Social Historyand Anthropology',ComparativeStudies inSociety and History, Vol 23, 1981.14 Lawrence Stone, op cit.

15 Jacques Le Goff, 'Is Politics Still theBackbone of History?' Daedalus, Vol 100,Winter 1971.

16 Even a historian of the stature of E JHobsbawm has frequently made a distinc-tion between the 'political' and the 'social',most recently n his article n E J Hobsbawmand T 0 Ranger, ed, "The Invention ofTradition",Cambridge, 1982.17 Carlo Ginzburg, "The Cheese and theWorms: The Cosmos of a 16th CenturyMiller"' New York, 1982; Natglie Z Davis,'Reasons of Misruleand Womenon Top'inher "Society and Culture in Early ModernFrance", London, 1975; E P Thompson,'RoughMusic: e Charivarianglais',AnnalesESC, Vol 27 ii, 1972.

18 E P Thompson, 'The Moral Economy ofthe EnglishCrowd n the 18thCentury',Pastand Present, No 50, February 1971.19 E P Thompson, "Whigs and Hunters:TheOrigins of the Black Act", Penguin, 1977;Hay, Linebaugh, Rule, Thompson andWinslow, ed, "Albion's Fatal Tree: Crimeand Society in 18th Century England",Penguin 1977. Cf. particularly in this col-lection Douglas Hay, 'Property, Authorityand the Common Law'.

20 Leonore Davidoff, 'Class and Gender inVictorian England', in Newton, Ryan,Walkowitz, ed, "Sex and Class in Women'sHistory" HistoryWorkshopSeries, London,etc, 1983.21 Hans Medick, 'PlebianCulturein the Tran-sition to Capitalism', n Samuel and Jones,ed, "Culture,Ideology and Politics"'op cit;GeraldM Sider, 'ChristmasMumming andthe New Year in Outport NewfoundlandPast and Present, No 71, May 1976, and'The Ties that Bind: Culture andAgriculture, Property and Propriety in theNewfoundland Village Fishery', Social

History, Volume VI, 1980.22 K K Datta, "Surveyof India's Social Life

and Economic Condition in the 18th Cen-tury",Delhi, 1976, 1978, ihapterI containsthe referenceto lTevelyan;Chapters2-4 areentiled, respectively, Trends of ReligiousThought, Education, and Social Life;Chapters 5-8 (148 out of a total of 221pages) deal with economic conditions.

23 V A Narain, "Social History of ModernIndia"'Meerut, 1972.24 Thus Chapter 7, entitled 'Society' has thefollowing sub-headings:urbansociety; pro-stitutes; amusements and festivals; cruelpractices;expensivepractices;opposition tosea voyage;some characteristicsof Bengalurban society-drinking, imitation ofEnglishmen, social reform;advancement ofwomen; abolition of slavery. R C Majum-dar,"Historyof ModernBengal".Calcutta,1978.

25 RavinderKumar,"Western ndia in the 19thCentury"'London 1968; 'Nationalism andSocial Change', 'Social Theory and theHistoricalPerceptionof ModernIndia',and'The Changing Structure of Urban Societyin Colonial India' in "Essays in the SocialHistory of Modern India", OUP, India,1983.

26 A representative,moreor less, of each type:B M Cully, "English Education and theOrigins of IndianNationalism",New York,1940; R P Dutt, "India Today",Bombay,1947; Anil Seal, "Emergence of IndianNationalism", Cambridge, 1968;Gallagher,Johnson, Seal, ed, 'Locality, ProvinceandNation", Cambridge, 1973; D A Wash-brook, "The Emergence of ProvincialPolitics: Madras Presidency 1870-1920',Cambridge, 1976, and D A Low's editorialintroduction to "Congress and the Raj:Facets of the Indian Struggle", London,1977.27 See, for instance, J S Grewal and InderBanga, ed, "Studies in Urban History"',Amritsar, n d.

28 A very partial list: the work, published orin progress, or MajidSiddiqi, GyanPandey,and Kapil Kumar on Uttar Pradesh;WalterHauser, K Suresh Singh, J Pouchapadass,Stephen Hennirgham,Arvindnarayan Das,Saradindu Mukherji, and Alok Sheel onBihar:Benoy Chowdhuri,KalyanSengupta,Hitesh Sanyal, ParthaChatterji,.SunilSen,Rafluddin Ahmad and Tanika Sarkar onBengal; Amalendu Guha on Assam;Biswamoy Pati on Orissa; David Arnol onAndhra and TamilNadu; D N Dhanagare,Stephen Dale and Conrad Wood onMalabar; Ghansyam Shah and DavidUardiman on Gujarat;RavinderKumarandGail Omvedt on Maharashtra;Hari Sen onRajasthan; Ravinder Kumar and MridulaMukherji on the Punjab. Significant workon labour includes R K Newman onBombay, Ranajit Dasguptaand DipeshChakrabartin Calcutta,ChitraJoshi on*Kanpur, nd R P Behal on Assmplanta-tions.

29 C Bayly, "Rulers,Townsmenand Bazars",Cambridge, 1983.30 For the distinction betweep ideologies andmentalite, and the consequent relativedecline of intellectualhistory', ee M Vovelle,'Ideologies and Mentalities' in SamuelandJones, ed, "Culture,Ideology and Politics",op cit; William J Bouwsma, 'IntellectualHistoryih the 1980s:From Historyof Ideasto Hilstory of Meaning', Journal of Inter-disciplinaryHistory, XII, 2, Autumn 1981;and Patrick H Hutton, 'The History ofMentalities: The New Map of CulturalHistory',Historyand Theory,VolXX, 1981.

31 R P Dutt, op cit, Index, p 524.32 I have tried to rectify the errorto a partialextent in my 'The Conditions and Natureof Subatlern Militancy: Bengal fromSwadeshito Non-cooperation,c 1905-1922',in P Guha; ed, "Subaltern Studies, III",Delhi, 1984.33 Cf particularly the extremelyvaluable criti-que in E P Thompson, 'EighteenthCenturyEnglish Society: Class Struggle without

Class?', Social History, III, 2, May 1978.34 RanajitGuha, "ElementaryAspects of Pea-sant Insurgencyin Colonial India",Delhi,1983,Ch I, andpassim see also Guha, 'TheProse of Counter-Insurgency"'n Guha ed"Subaltern Studies, II", Delhi, 1982.35 Guha, 'The Prose of Counter-Insurgency'.op cit, p 3.36 Guha, "ElementaryAspects", op cit, p 4.37 E P Thompson, 'The Moral Economy ofthe EnglishCrowd n the 18thCentury',Pastand Present, No 50, February 1971.38 E P Thompson, 'Eighteenth CenturyEnglish Society: Class Struggle withoutClass?', Social History, III, 2, May 197839 For an effective critique of suchanachronisni as manifested in the writingsof a radical scholar, see Guha, 'The Proseof Counter-Insurgency',op cit, pp 35-38.40 I do not feel happy, therefore,with Guha'sattempt in his introduction to "SubalternStudies, I" to arriveat a general enumera-tion of subaltern groups in colonial Indiaby simply subtracting certain 'elites.41 I owe many of these points to discussionswith two Delhi Universitystudents,SaurabhDube and Dilip Menon, and in particularto SaurabhDube's 'PeasantInsurgencyandPeasant Consciousness'; published now inEconomic and Political Weekly,March 161985.

42 See the articles by Ashok Sen, Barun De,SumitSarkarand PradyumnaBhattacharyain V C Joshi, ed, "Rammohun Roy and theProcess of Modernisation in India",Delhi,1975, and BarunDe, 'A HistoricalCritiqueof Renaissance Analogues for NineteenthCentury India',in Barun De, ed,."Perspec-tives in Social Sciences, I", Calcutta, etc,1977.43 Apart rom hearticles nRanunohunitedabove, herewasaniunpublished aperbyBarunP)eon DavidHare; SumitSarkar,'TheComplexitiesf Young.Bengal',Nine-teenthCentury tudies,October1973,and1087



9/9

June 22-29, 1985 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY

Asok Sen, "IswarchandraVidyasagar andHis Elusive Milestones", Calcutta, 1977.

44 W H Sewell, "NVorkand Revolution inFrance: The Language of Labour from theOld Regime to 1848",Cambridge, 1980.45 Satinath Bhaduri's ascinatingBengali novelDhorai Charit Manas, Calcutta, 1949,depicts villagers in north Bihar identifyingthe charkha with the SudarshanchakraofKrishna. For the nuances of salt, see TanikaSarkar,"National Movement and PopularProtest in Bengal, 1928 34", unpublishedthesis, Delhi University, 1981.

46 I attempted a preliminary,and I feel now inmany ways quite inadequate, analysis ofthese problems in my 'Conditions andNature of SubalternMilitancy:Bengal fromSwadeshi to Non-Cooperation, 1905-1922',in R Guha, ed, "Subaltern Studies, III",Delhi, 1984.

47 Shahid Amin, 'Gandhi as Mahatma:Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921-22'in Guha. ed, "SubalternStudies, III" Delhi,1984.

48 Cf, for instance,Louis Dumont 'Onthe Dif-ferent Aspects.or Levels in Hinduism',*inDumont and Pocock, ed, "ContributionstoIndian Sociology, III", 1959. For a verysimilar debate on levels within Chinesereligion, see Arthur Wolf, ed, "Religion andRitualin ChineseSociety",California,1974.49 E P Thompson, 'Anthropology and theDiscipline of Historical Context' MidlandHistory, 13, Spring 1972.

50 See, for example, Stuart Clark, 'FrenchHistorians and Early Modern PopularCulture',Past and Present, No 100; CarloGinzburg's preference for the concept of'popular culture' as against the non-classimplications of 'mentalities"n "The Cheeseand the Worms", op cit, pp xxiiivxxiv,andthe anthropologist MichaelGilsenan'scom-ment that "the different interpretationsofand selections from an essentiallycommonbody of myth within a society or cult arehistorically quite critical", 'Myth and theHistory of African Religion' in T 0 Rangerand J N Kimombo, ed, "The HistoricalStudy of African Religion", London, etc,1972.

51 Ramakrishna by virtue of his caste statuscould never have been a working peasant,but his lack of formal education made hima participant of the folk culture of thepeasantry.52 Mahendanath Gupta,Sri SriRamakrishna-Kathamrita(henceforward K) 5V, Calcutta1902-1932, Volume V, p 44, June 2, 1883,My translations, from the 1980-82 edition.

53 K IV, pp 11, 68; KV, p 104.54 K II, p 2, (October 16, 1882).55 K IV, p 101, (June 20, 1884).56 K II, p 49, (June 4, 1883).57 K IV, pp 254-5, (September 1, 1885).58 Instances abound: see, for example, K II,

p 63 (June 15, 1883);K III, pp 82-3. 190-191,(June30, 1884,May 9, 1885,June 13, 1885),K IV, pp 11, 67-8 (February 25, 1883,February2, 1885). Note the contrast bet-ween the troublesome amla and the distantoverlord who can be reached directlythrough devotion, evocative of peasantdreams n so manycountriesof the just kingor 'little father' of the poor.

59 K I, p 121, (June 15, 1884).60 E P Thom'pson, Time,Work-Discipline nd

IndustrialCapitalism'.Past and Present,No38, December 1967.61 It may not be irrelevanto mention herethat

MahendranathGupta, who kept the recordlater published as the Kathamrita, was aschool-teacher who encouraged his pupilsto cut classes to come to Ramakrishna.Hewas dismissed later by Vidyasagar forneglecting his school duties.

62 The text is a valuable source also forexplaininggenderrelations,for instance.Fora detailed analysis of the Kathamnrita,,eemy "The Kathamritaas a Text:TowardsanUnderstanding of Ramakrishna Param-hansa', OccasionalPaper,Nehru MemorialMuseum and Library,New Delhi, 1985.

63 James M Freeman, "Untouchable: AnIndian Life History",London, 1979, p 354.

64 Thus Ranke'ssublime faith in the total im-partialityof historianswas stillbeingechoedby scholars ikeR C Majumdar n the 1960s:the Anglo-Saxon vogueof economic historyof the 1930s, reachedIndiaabout a genera-tion later; French structuralism has juststarted affecting some of us.65 TonyJudt, 'A Clownin RegalPurple:SocialHistory and the Historians', HistoryWorkshop,7, Spring, 1979.

66 Keith Thomas, "History and Anthropo-logy", op cit.

67 Carlo Ginzburg, Anthropologyand Historyin the 1980s:A Comment'.Journal of Inter-disciplinaryHistory, XII, 2, Autumn 1981.See also, in the same issue, Natalie Z Davis,'Anthropology and History in the 1980s:The Possibilities of the Past'.

68 E P Thompson, 'Folklore, Anthropologyand Social History', Indian HistoricalReview, III, 2, January 1977.

69 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and EugeneGenovese, op cit.

70 TonyJudt, op cit; see also Geoff Eloy andKeith Nield,, 'Why Does Social HistoryIgnore Politics?' Social History, V, 2, May1980.

71 Hans Medick, "PlebianCulture . . .",op cit.72 Clifford Geertz, 'Thick Description:

Towards An Interpretative Theory ofCulture; The Cereberal Savage; On theWork of Claude Levi Strauss; Deep Play:Notes on the BalineseCockfight'>n Geertz,"The Interpretationof Cultures"' London,1975.

73 Carlo Ginzburg, 'Morelli, Freud and

Sherlock Holmes: Clues and ScientificMethod' History Workshop, , Spring1908.

74 E P Thompson, "The Poverty of Theory",London, 1978;Pierre Bourdicu, "OutlineofA Theory of Practice",Cambridge, 1977.See also PeterL Berger,"The Social Realityof Religion", London, 1967, Chapter I;Philip Abrams, 'History, Sociology,Historical Sociology', Past and Present, No87, May 1980;and, for the mythificationin-volved in the reductionof culture to nature,Roland Barthes, "Mythologies" London,etc, 1973.

75 Defined as "systems of durable disposi-tions-an endless capacity to engenderpro-ducts, thoughts, perceptions, expressions,actions-whose limits are set by the histori-cally and socially situated conditions of itsproduction-the freedom it secures is asremote from a creation of unpredictablenovelty as it is from a simple mechanicalreproductionof the initial conditionings",Bourdicu, op cit, pp 72, 95.

76 Bernard S Cohn, 'History and Anthropo-logy: The State of Play', ComparativeStudies in Society and History, V, 22, 1980.See also his 'Anthropology and History inthe 1980s-Towards A Rapproachment',Journal of Interdisciplinary History,Autumn 1981.

77 E P Thompson, 'Folklore, Anthropologyand Social History', op cit.78 The undoubted strength of the BritishMarxist historicaltradition,in contrast,hasbeen attributedby Hobsbawmin partto theformidable evelof its adademicadversaries:"The advantage was that we could not getaway with bullshit", Interview withE J Hobsbawm, MARHO, "Visions ofHistory". Manchester, 1983, p, 30.79 Cf, for instance,the "Grundrisse"ormula-tion: "a general illumination which bathesall the colours and modifies theirparticula-rity ... a particulareitherwhich determinesthe specific gravityof every being whichhasmaterialisedwithinit" KarlMarx, "Graun-drisse", Penguin, 1973, p 107,E P Thomp-son cites this passage in his 'Folklore,Anthropology and Social History',op cit.Cf also his 'ThePeculiaritiesof the English',Socialist Register, 1963, and RaymondWilliams, 'Base and Superstructure inMarxistCulturalTheory',New Left Review,November-December 1974.

80 E P Thompson, "Whigs and Hunters".Penguin, 1977, p 261.

81 Gerald M Sider, "The Ties that Bind....op cit.

82 E P Thompson, 'Folklore, Anthropologyand Social History', op cit.

83 Ellen Ross and Rayna-Rapp, "Sex andSociety ... 9, op cit.

84 Interviewwith E P Thompson, MARHO,"Visions of History", op cit, p 20.

1088

This content downloaded from 134 126 78 14 on Sat 14 Dec 2013 18:15:21 PM
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

Social History: Predicaments and Possibilities by Sumit Sarkar

Documents

Transcript of Social History: Predicaments and Possibilities by Sumit Sarkar