Session 5

What is interesting about this week's readings is that they finally talk about the Subaltern itself, rather than just the discipline of Subaltern Studies. However, even within this discussion of the Subaltern, so much is about what is not known. There is an acknowledgement that what is reconstructed about the Subaltern is from colonial or nationalist writings. This ties in with several of the themes from the last class, and throughout the course about the limits of knowing.

In speaking of the layers of Subalternity, we have discussed peasants, workers and women (in class discussions). But if we are to admit that in some circles, even the powerful cannot speak, can we also think of the divide within colonial India along race? Yes, the elite were better off, and yes, their histories are written, they have spoken of themselves, but in their nationalist attempts, are they, too, attempting to give voice to a people which has been subjugated and oppressed?

It is interesting that we have discussed at length about whether or not we can qualify the peasants as political but we didn't really discuss what we really mean by political. Is it about  some obscure political consciousness? Class consciousness? Or is it just about power- in the different forms it exists in? Or the awareness of different power dynamics that influence people's lives? Because if that is the case, then maybe we can focus on smaller acts of resistance (despite what Guha says about collective acts in the face of power) as political as well.

We also perhaps need a more nuanced understanding of violence, who wields it, and why. What do we categorize as violence? The peasants were creative in their non-violent ways of opposition (lying down on train tracks, for instance) before Gandhi came along. Yet, even with those ways, they resort to rioting, because the means available to them are limited. Even if they manage to invert symbols, as Guha has written, could they really have gained attention if not for the kind of revolt these authors recount? Gandhi advocating non-violence to the peasants seems easier to do from his position. But even he only addressed them AFTER there were revolts all over India. Is violence instrumental then? Or can we state that the violence on the part of the insurgent is fundamentally different from its use as a means of control (both physical and mental) by the oppressor?

This also raises the question: do we only look at those groups which revolt? Chakrabarty states that the colonial enterprise, as well as the Industrialists only looked seriously at the workers when they began to revolt. Can we apply that to the discipline of Subaltern Studies? Is the reason these readings focus primarily on peasants and workers because they are the ones who revolted, and it is to them that humanity/subjectivity must be returned? What of the others who we never hear of? Is the Subaltern one who cannot speak, or the one whose actions we don't see as well, who gets hidden somewhere amidst one mass explanation/ideology or the other?

And if that is true, how is it that we proceed? In the scarcity of sources that exist, perhaps it is only possible to define in terms of negatives. If what we have are official records, then maybe we do need to rely on "imaginative leaps" to try to provide alternatives, to try, even if it is an almost impossible task, to give voice and narrative to the silenced.