Writing HistoryAuthor(s): Anita ChakravartyReviewed work(s):Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 51 (Dec. 23, 1995), p. 3320Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4403593 .Accessed: 31/10/2012 08:31

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DISCUSSION

Writing History Anita Chakravarty

IT is surprising that Ramachandra Guha ('Subaltern and Bhadralok Studies', August 19) should claim (1) that writing about the elite "is emphatically not subaltern studies" and (2) that history should be written only from "the field and the archive, the law court and the newspaper office" and not from the library.

One of the tirst things we learnt as students in the mid- I 980s about subaltern studies was that subalternity was not a thing that belonged to some social groups, it was a relation. It is perfectly possible, and in fact is most otten the case, that those who are in a position of domination in one relation are simultaneously in a subaltern position in another. Surely, every researcher today is aware that even among the most oppressed and disprivileged groups there are relations of domination within - those between men and women, the old and the young, between one low caste group and another. Why does it seem to Ramachandra Guha that a study of new forms ot subordination ot women in middle class families (Dipesh Charkrabarty's essay in Slubailtern Studies VIII) is not about subalternity? One might also say that a most productive move in the recent works ot the Suibaltern Studties group is precisely their problematisation of the subalternity ot the nationalist elite, a formulation that clearly has major implications tor our understanding of the new patterns of domination under the post-colonial regime.

Guha's conilplaint about -abandoning the archive for the library", with its sentimental evocation of the historian as a craltsinaii with soiled hands. is so patently ridiculous that it hardly deserves comment. However, there is a more special point that needs to be made here. Historians of modern India have always known, but have rarely thought about, the tact that the material in our official archives, with negligible exceptions, are all in the English language. This enabled generations of historians of modern India to practise their 'craft' without using, and in many cases without even knowing, a single Indian language. The tirst aLttempts by Subaltern Stludies historians, trying to work their way out of this historiographical tradition, were marked, most notably in Ranajit Guha's pioneering work, bv innovative techniques to reaid the presence of an insurgent consciousness from what were most otten English-language colonial accounts. But the question ot finding traces of subaltern voices in an Indian-language archive remained

unanswered. Yet it was surely obvious to everyone that the vast masses of the Indian people did not think, speak, dominate orrevolt in the English language.

One possibility, of course, was oral history, which has been used very fruitfully in many studies on modern Indian history in the last two decades, perhaps most consummately in the recent book by Shahid Amin reviewed by Ramachandra Guha. But the limitations of oral sources are well known, and for the development of any sustained historio- graphical practice, they could be an important supplement to, but never a substitute for. the archive.

Perhaps the most significant contribution of recent works in Subaltertii Studies to the 'craft' of the historian of modem India is the sustained way in which they have focuised attention on, and indeed shifted the terrain of debate to, the field constituted by the printed literature of the last two hundred years in the modern Indiani languages. It has already become clear thlla this is the principal archive for modem Indian history. containing far riclher treasures than the official archives, especially tor the historian of the subaltern classes. Contrary to what Ramachandra Guha believes, this does not "make it very easy for the historian": not at all. As someone who, as a research student, has made the move from the ofticial archive to the library, I know that working with printed literature, at least in Bengali. is far more arduous, time-consuming anid frustratiilln than working in the archives. This is f-or the simple reason that this 'other archlive' - thalt of' the printed literature in Bengali ol' lhe last two lhundred years - does not physically exist in anv one placc. even as a library. A researcher usually has to hunt around in a dozen libraries in and around Calcutta. without the benefit of usable catalogues; for the foilunate t'ew who have the opportunity. the best source is still VernacularTracts collection at the IndiaOl'fice Library. I cannot believe that the situation is any better for other Indian languages.

In fact, the recent move into cultural hlistory, in which Subalieirnl Studies historians have played a leading part. has meant that this other archive is now literally beginning to be put together, piece by piece, with new bibliographies, catalogues, reprographs and microfilms. The possibilities for subaltern history are immense. Only a tiny traction of what was printed in the 19th and 20th centuries has entered academic history-writing, even for the literary disciplines in the Indian

languages, since the majority of printed matter did not qualify as worthwhile literature and were not preserved in libraries or written about by scholars. Putting together this alternative archive will mean not just that techniques of 'reading against the grain' could be applied to texts produced by the Indian elite in the Indian languages, as has been done most impressively by recent femiinist scholars. It also means an unprecedented chance to lay our hands on a large body of written materials produced by distinctly non-elite sections of the people. It is foolish to suggest, as Ramachandra Guha does, that a 'library' of printed literature, even for colonial India, contains only the writings of the elite. On the contrary, what is now rapidly becoming clear to researchers in cultural history is the enormous volume of printed literature that could be sought out which carry the materials of subaltern history at a level of immediately that it is impossible to find in any other source.

One can understand that a European historian such as Hans Medick, whom Ramachandra Guha cites, will not know of this pecuiliar problem with languages and sources that Indian historians have faced in the writing of'theirown history. It is astonishing that Guha. an Indian scholar, does not seem to be even remotely aware of the sea-change that has taken place in modern Indian historiography in the last decades and a halt: Indian history cannot be written any more except with materials in the Indian languages and for this the ot'ficial archive as historians have known it for so long will no longer sut'fice.

A tfinal point. Subalterni Studies has been admired and criticised in academic forums all over the world. But there has been a persistent strand in some ot'the criticisms that continues to be made in India which betrays a different anxiety. One of the achievements of Subtltern 1 Studies sclholarship is the svstemnatic demonstration of the close complicity of'elite ideologies, whether liberal, Gandhian or Marxist, with the emergenlce of new forms of domination and subordination in post- colonial India. This has made the enterprise of scholarslhip fraught with tension. It does not allow the scholar - the elite historian of' the subaltern classes - to writc without think- ing reflexively of his or her own relation to the projects o t'power in his or her own society. This is hardly conducive to the writing of history as it was taught to us. Whatever he the shortcomnings of 'the recent Subalternl Studies, it has at least ensured that simple- minded histories, based on what Ramnachandra Guha calls "the li ved experience" of'the people (a phrase that would make any decent philosopher squirm). will henceforth find few takers.

3320 Economic and Political Weekly December 23, 1995