Subalternity and the Indian Rebellion of 1857: Staging the History of the Marginalized in Utpal Dutt's The Great Rebellion (original) (raw)
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Reconstructing an event: The Great Rebellion of 1857–8 and Singhbhum Indigenes
Routledge, 2011
Introduction The early historicization of Adivasi anti-colonial movements in Jharkhand is replete with methodological problems.2 Since the celebration of the centenary of the Great Rebellion of 1857–8, scholars reconstructing narratives of anti-colonial struggles sought to prove that these were truly pan-Indian in character (Majum- dar 1962: 196–9).Those belonging to the nationalist and leftist schools tended to subsume these struggles, to use Ranajit Guha’s expression, under the ‘pre- history’ of the national and socialist-communist movements (Guha 1983: 4). Even if nationalism had inspired the making of provincial narratives where tribal or Adivasi struggles found space (Datta 1940, 1957: 66–76; Roy Choudhury 1959: 74–9; Das Gupta 2007: 96–119; Sen 2008: 82–107), the historiographic agenda were more or less to enrich the national mainstream.
The Militant Historiography of Subaltern Studies: Ranajit Guha «Intellectually Insurrectionary»
«The task of historiography is to interpret the past in order to help in changing the world» GUHA 1983A, p. 336 A theoretical consciousness: the connection between knowledge and power The history-rewriting project of Subaltern Studies is determined by a strong political value, display of the awareness of the connection between history, power and coercion: The assumption that the power relations of colonial rule were contained in an integrated and unified field with all the ideologies and political practices of the period articulated within a single domain. GUHA 1997, p. X By analyzing the studies of previous scholars, subaltern historians discover their collusion with the dominant structures of oppression. Guha is aware that historiography contributes to the fabrication of both the spurious hegemony and the «complicity between the formation of a colonial state in India and the production of colonialist histories of the Raj» 2 .
Topic: Pan-Indian character of the Revolt
2022
Shiv Gajrani has focused on the Revolt if 1857 in Punjab and especially focused on the Sikhs. Surprisingly, almost a majority of historians agree that the Punjabees, particularly the Sikhs cooperated with the British, and aided their victory in 1857. This conclusion, ignores very important issues relating to the nature of the Revolt , a primitivist response to the western threat. Shiv Gajrani argues that the important question is whether the Sikhs acted as a community in favour of the British. In pre-modern societies cohesion has always been far less than in modern societies because in rural economics the role of economic exchange was very confined or limited. The aristocracy interrelated with wider society through institutions which expressed society as a whole, secondly through their political authority. The unit of organised action for the peasantry was either the community or the tribe. In the pre-modern hierarchically stratified society initiative rested with the top. Lower section of the society, especially the peasantry could merely exhibit a readiness to follow a direction. This was the reason that the Revolt took the found individual heroism rather than a General Revolt heroism. Another important point of the Revolt if 1857 was that it was spearheaded by the agrarian based military elite of the poor bias.
Retracing Bandhu Singh's contribution in 1857 revolution : A subaltern narrative
Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav , 2022
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India against the rule of the British East India Company. After the outbreak of the mutiny in Meerut, the rebels quickly reached the different parts of the country and the rebellion took on the attributes of a patriotic revolt against British oppression. Apart from the many known and glorified leaders, many silent leaders who organized and fought against Britishers at local level remained neglected and disregarded even today in the 75th years of Indian Independence. Bandhu Singh, who was the forerunner of the revolution in Purvanchal during the first freedom struggle of 1857, is one of such brave freedom fighters who has been forgotten for long. Often regarded as Amar Shahid or immortal martyr among the local folks, Bandhu Singh was a guerrilla warrior who fought against the British Raj after being inspired by the great revolutionary Mangal Pandey. Though many post-colonial thinkers including Ania Loomba have found it problematic to pinpoint the exact positionality of such unsung freedom fighters, Prof. Chandrabhushan Ankur argues that Historians did not find much in the documents regarding Bandhu Singh whereas, Prof. Rizvi is of the opinion that unfortunately his contributions could not be recorded. My paper intends to embrace the subaltern narrative of Bandhu Singh's participation in India's freedom struggle as part of the mainstream. This subaltern hero needs to be remembered and embraced by every citizen and these narratives need to move from the periphery to the center.
Autonomous Domains or Relational Practices? Power and Resistance in Colonial and Postcolonial India
'The historiography of Indian nationalism has for a long time been dominated by elitism – colonialist elitism and bourgeois-nationalist elitism'. With this assertion Ranajit Guha (1982: 1) announced the arrrival of a new and fundamentally oppositional historiographical perspective which would become foundational for a whole school of studies of political protest and social movements in historical and contemporary India. The assertion opens his essay 'On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India', printed in the first volume of the Subaltern Studies series; the series title also gave its name to the project that was crystallizing in the work of Guha and his colleagues. 1 Guha claims that this historiographical elitism, and its interpretation of the Indian struggle for independence from British colonial rule, is in reality 'an echo of imperialism' (1989: 296). Within the established, dominant perspectives in modern Indian history – often referred to as the Cambridge school – the independence movement was viewed as a political project within which Indian elites, schooled through their participation in the colonial power's academic, bureaucratic and political institutions and motivated by the 'rewards' that national independence would bring in the form of material wealth, social status and political influence, mobilized large social groups around liberal-democratic demands for the transfer of power and Indian self-government. The problem with this perspective, according to Guha, is not only its implicit or explicit celebration of colonialism and its effects, but above all the fact that the involvement of the 'subaltern' majorities in the independence struggle is portrayed as a passive response to mobilization and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak have been among the most central contributors to Subaltern Studies, of which 11 volumes have been published to date.
Mutiny or Revolution? The Consequences of Events in India in 1857
The focus of this project is on both the nature and consequences, for India, of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Classic British historians have offered a clear simplistic view that events should be classed as a Mutiny. However, I focus on the debate between the Indian historians that emerged in the twentieth century. I conclude that the events of 1857 must be characterised initially as a military Mutiny, but later as a collective conservative rebellion for the protection of religion, and the rejection of British rule. I go on to discuss the short term effects, looking at the social and military reform undertaken by the British, which represents how their attitudes to the culture and native peoples of India was shifted by the uprising against British rule. This shift moves away from legislative reforms imposed from above, to focus on shifting young Indian’s attitudes gradually and naturally, through Victorian style education. Furthermore I discuss the short term reorganisation of the Indian militaries, and how the events in 1857 led to the development of a material race ideology. Lastly, I discuss how the Rebellion, and its consequences led to a national sentiment developing, which leads to the onset of the early Independence Movement.
Creative Saplings, 2022
This paper attempts to evaluate the resistance to the ethnic and gender subalternity portrayed by Mahasweta Devi n the story, Draupadi. Mahasweta Devi portrays a figure of resistance to the multi-layered subalternity through the rejection of gender performative acts in both theatrical and non-theatrical contexts of subaltern. The story, Draupadi, challenges the conventional phallocentric representation of gender subalterns and colonial domination over marginalized ethnicity through the construction of the character, Dopdi Mejhen (or Draupadi), a young Santal widow, fighting for the socioeconomic freedom of her tribe, who radically stands naked exposing her blood spotted body against the oppressive colonizer after extreme physical oppression, to protest the patriarchal and colonial domination over her body and ethnic community. She is subaltern by her class, caste and gender; but liberates herself from subalternity through non-cooperation resistance. This paper applies the theory of 'subalternity' of Ranajit Guha and Chakravorty Spivak to bring out the aspects of multi-layered subalternity and intellectual location of the resistance; and theory of 'gender performativity' of Judith Butler to evaluate the resistance of gender subalternity. This research proves that the conquering resistance to the colonial domination and subalternity is the result of the non-cooperative movement against dominant elitism, rejection of gender performative acts in both theatrical and nontheatrical contexts, radical stand against ethnic representation, existential tactic to disrupt the essential codes and dominant administrative colonial power.