On Methodology

              Gautam Bhadra writes a history of 1857 based on particular stories of four rebels whose “ordinariness” constituted “their distinction”. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s history of jute workers of late nineteenth century Calcutta is informed by, if not based on, the premise that like “knowledge has a history” similarly “gaps have a history too”. Gyan Pandey re-examines “a small part of colonial history” (and to some extend colonial historiography) by engaging with an Urdu historical chronicle called Waqeat-o-Hadesat: Qasba Mubarakpur. In his article on peasant revolt in Awadh, Pandey engages with contemporary responses to the peasant revolt in Awadh and how historians have understood what he calls “the view of better-educated and more vocal participants”. At the heart of all these histories is a recognition of the “woefully incomplete” record of those who are a part of “faceless elements in an omnibus category called ‘the people’”.  What does one do to recover their histories? Recovering the histories of this ‘omnibus category’ is a very ambitious project. If we rephrase this question then it becomes slightly more understandable: how does one write a history of the people which problematizes this category of ‘the people’ when historical records and archives are “woefully incomplete”? This is where methodology comes in, front and center. These histories too are very conscious of the methodology that is used to construct them but are they reflexive?

            Bhadra talks of four rebels of 1857: Shal Mal, Gonoo, Devi Singh and Maulvi. He says that while “they did not know each other” yet they were “pitted against the same enemy” at “the same historical moment”. This is why the narrative that Bhadra writes is “fragmentary and episodic”. Collective memory, shared history, clan feelings loom large in his analysis of why the figures that he chose were able to mobilize people. Dipesh Chakrabarty identifies the history of jute mill workers of Calcutta as a “history both of our knowledge and our ignorance”. His analysis offers explanations that are economic as well as “cultural”. Again there is a sense of diversity when it comes to cultural explanation: manager’s authority, religious consciousness, literacy etc. There emerges a sense of a collective experience in terms of those who worked under the manager’s supervision, sacrificed  goats at the power-machine at the time of Diwali (To be fair, it is a collective too that gets drunk and goes to brothels in E.P Thompson).

            Pandey’s article about the history of Mubarakpur compares approaches to history writing. It reminds one of Haydon White’s capitalized alphabets in terms of what a historian chooses to emphasize on. It contains examples that tells us how time, events and what is considered history is viewed by the chronicler of Waqaet as opposed to colonial historiographers. The collective does emerge here too but in many different ways where the events presented in the Waqaet tell us about particular individuals and the community. Pandey isn’t over-interested in “bringing forth the collective experience” (Badhra) that he ultimately does. Similarly, his methodology in the article on peasant revolt is such that he tells us of the contemporary views of the political events in Awadh in 1921-22 which frames his analysis. How is this any different from what the others are doing?

            To my mind, there is an honesty (as well as cleverness) in claiming that source X says such about this and I am going to engage with that representation of the event as opposed to the actual event. To some extend Bhadra and Chakrabarty do this too, because it is a necessity based on the limitations of the archives that they work with. Yet it is arguably more explicit in Pandey’s writings especially the one on Mubarakpur as opposed to the others’ writings. Why is this important one would ask? Methodology is central because it is the premise on which subaltern historiography distinguishes itself from others. To sum it up: it’s about creatively reading the archives, especially the gaps and silences within archives and representing them. Critically engaging with the ways in which other sources within the archive represent a particular event that has been silenced might be useful to rewrite silences and construct histories.