Approver's Testimony

One aspect of the difficulties faced while writing a subaltern history that has come up repeatedly in the course of our discussions, one that now seems painfully obvious, is the limited nature of the archive. In this piece, however, I feel like Shahid Amin has given us a new angle from which to view the same problem. I am referring to his emphasis on the need for a historian of the subaltern classes to "investigate the discursive practices within which statements [...] are produced". He alludes particularly to statements made in connection with legal proceedings, but it is important to qualify, as he does, that this needs to be done not to merely identify bias and arrive at some nominally "real" truth. It is important, however, as an acknowledgement of the fact that "most statements about the dominated are produced within well defined fields of power", and that an understanding of the specificities of that power as it operates in specific cases, is crucial to the writing of subaltern histories (167). Neither this notion of the role of power in the construction of historical narratives in general, nor this critical approach to court records and archives of legal documents, in particular, are new to us; we saw both last session with Trouillot and Guha. However, I felt as though, from his exploration of the Approver's Testimony and the Judicial Discourse in the Chauri Chaura case, I could see a more concrete example of how the sort of critical historiography indicated in last session’s readings might practically play out.

Trouillot’s explanation of how power enters into the writing of history and historical narratives at every stage of their creation (he names four) seemed especially relevant here, with regard to the overwhelmingly constructed nature of the entire case, the key aspect of which was the Approver’s Testimony. Amin’s treatment of the Approver’s Testimony and its subsequent readings, whether for legal or historical purposes, really brings this question of power to the forefront, especially its role in the creation of facts. Shikari is chosen as Approver because he is best suited for the role in the way the court has chosen to read the case or crime, and his testimony is most thoroughly molded to fit in with the same narrative. On a smaller scale, we saw the same happen in “Chandra’s Death”- the fact that the court chose to view it as a murder, and that this reading happened at the outset, not the culmination, of the legal proceedings, completely obscures the alternative reading that Guha presents. The thoroughness of Amin’s deconstruction of the Approver’s Testimony, and the variables that have gone into making it, was valuable for me because it helped, I think, solidify that distinction between the merely oppressed and the subaltern that we have been struggling with throughout. It reinforced the idea that it may be the degree to which the oppressed are at the mercy of the power of the dominating, that determines their subalternity. Here, the courts’ treatment of the accused, including the Approver, unfolds on the basis of a pre-configured approach to the case. From thereon, the primary spokesperson is decided accordingly, what he says is molded to fit, what does not fit is read so that it does, or presumably eliminated from the discourse. To risk an oversimplification, what is said, who says it, how it is said, and how it is read then and in the future, all are determined largely through the exercise of power, both overt and subtle.