Subaltern Consciousness and Historiography of 1857

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1/7

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Subaltern Consciousness and Historiography of Indian Rebellion of 1857Author(s): Darshan PerusekSource: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 28, No. 37 (Sep. 11, 1993), pp. 1931-1936Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4400141Accessed: 06-04-2015 19:52 UTC

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2/7

Subaltern

onsciousness

n d i s

toriography

o

n d i a n

ebellion

o

8 5 7

Darmhan

Perusek

The subaltern historians'

rewriting

of

history has

twvoobjectives: (1) the dismantling of elitist

historiography

by decoding biases and valuejudgments in records, testimonies, and narrativesof the ruling-classes;

and

(2)

the

restoration

to subaltern

groups

of

their

'agency' their

role in history as 'subjects'

with an ideology and a political

agenda of

their own. While

the

first objective

has

yielded

some

interesting

and important insights, the second

has led

to results

which have

been, at best, problemati;

and, at worst, tediously neo-antiquarian

and remarkably

unremarkable

in their

banality. These problems derive

from the cantradictions

and confusions inherent in the

very concept of subaltetnity

as a socio/political category.

MY

interest

in

.jhe

1857 rebellion is more

than academic. It has partly

to do

with

the-story

of how my great-grandfather

Baba

Karak

Singh

was

awarded a

'jagir'

(an estae and its revenues) by the British

for

'loyalty',

n the

midst

of a

'contagion'

of betrayal and treachery by mutinous

-sepoys (soldiers)

and disaffected

landlords, magnates

and

peasants.

Faithful

to his

masters,

the

old

man,

so

the family legend goes,

rode

like the

wind

on a

dark and moonless

night

to

bring

to

the officer

in

charge details

of the secret

military plans

of

the

rebels.

My great-

grandfather's name does

not appear

in

any

official

roll-call

of heroes

or

villains,

pre-independenceor post-independence;

he was too minor

a

figure,

too insigni-

ficant to

be

deserving

of

such notice

by

history. But he was remembered very well

by

his children and their

children

for

the

ill-gotten land that he left them, which

grewsugarcane hat sharecroppersplanted

and harvested

and

paid

one-third as

revenue to him, and the

freshness and

sweetness

of which

my

mother could

still

taste

in

her

mouth

years

later when

she

spoke

of BabaKarak

Singh

and his

family

jagir.

So much for

innocence.

But

I

tell

this

story

less

as

a

confession

of

complicity by

inheritance

than as an

explanation

of the

initial

enthusiasm with

which I read in the early 80s the first

essays

in

Indian social history by

a

group

of

post-independence

historians in

Subaltern Studies Writings on South

Asian History and Society,

the first

volume of which appeared n 1982 under

the

general editorship

of

Ranajit

Guha of

the Research

lnstitut;

of

Pacific Studies

at

the

Australian National

University,

Canberra.

"The

historiography

of

Indian

nationalism".

Guha stated

in

the first

essay

in

the

volume,

"has for

a

long time

been dominated by

elitism-colonialist

-elitism

and

bourgeois-nationalist

elitism"

['Historiography

bf

Colonial India',

Subaltern Studies,

Vol

1, p

I

]-an

elitism

which saw the making of the Indian

nation, predominantly,as the

achievement

of ruling

class ideas, institutions,

and

personalities.

What is

excluded or, if present,

marginalised,

n these narratives,he charg-

ed, was the 'politics of the people' which,

in his view,

was autonomous and existed

parallel to the domain of elite politics

throughout

the colonial

period.

This

was

politics "in which the principal

actors were

not the dominant groups of

the indi-

genous society or the colonial

authorities

but

the 'subaltern' lasses

and

groups

con-

stituting

the mass of the

labouring

population and

the intermediate strata

in

town

and

country"[p 4].

To write

history from the subaltern

point of view, as Guha makesclear later

in

this essay,

is at once

to declare

an 'in-

terest' that -is,

to

confess to

the 'con-

tamination'

of subjectivity n an enterprise

which makes

a point of defining itself in

termsof its disinterestednessand neutrali-

ty

vis-a-vis the 'raw material' of history

(historicalrecords,

eyewitness'reports, en-

sus

data, etc).

It

is,

in

other words,

to

make

clear

the

historians'

positionality

with regard to

the structures of power as

they

obtain

within

a given social forma-

tion.

Thus,

Guha says without equivo-

cation that

"the

dominant groups

will

receive

n

these

volumes the

consideration

they deserve

without, however, being

endowed wit

h

the

spurious

primacy

assigned

to them by the long-standing

tradition of elitism in South Asian

studies" [Preface, Selected Subaltern

Studies, p 35, Italics added].

Guha's characterisation

of the primacy

attached to dominant groups by

tradi-

tional

ruling class

historiography

as

'spurious' is,

of course, provocative and

intended to be so. As Edward

Said observ-

ed,

"Theirs [the

subaltern

historians']

is

no

history

of ideas,

no

calmly Olympian

narrativeof events,

no

disengaged objec-

tive recital of facts. It is rather

sharply

contestary,

an attempt

to

wrest

control of

the

past

from its

scribes

and

curators

in

the

present,

since...much

of

the

past

con-

tinues

in

the

present" [Foreword to

Selected

Subaltern Studies,

p

viii].

This

was heady

stuff, really.

One

knew

that

history

was

biased,

that there was

no

such

things

as 'value-free', 'objective'

history,

but

the rules of the

game,

so

far

as

one knew it, involved

revealing

he

bias

in other historians' work

and

hiding your

own as

cleverly

as possible.

To

confess

your own

bias? This

was unheardof

and

audacious

and honest.

And

this

business

of "wresting

the

past

from its scribes

and

curators

n the

present"

this

was no mere

fighting the

windmills

either,

for one had

the

vague suspicion

that notwithstanding

'full-blooded'

nationalist

reconstructions

of

the

past,

colonialist historiography

on-

tinued

to survive,

albeit

in more

decorous

and subdued

forms,

in the corridors

of

Oxbridge.

In

fact, my

reading

of

Eric

Stokes's

The

Peasant

and

the

Raj

and

The

Peasant

Armed,

necessary and

il-

luminatingreadings, or anyscholar of the

period,

later

proved

that such

forebodings

were no chimera

of my

mind.

This explicitly

combative

stance of

the

new historians

was in itself a promise

of

good

things to come.

What seemed

equal-

ly promising

was

a serious corrective,

by

their

insistence on the

importance

of the

cultural

dimension

of social

life, to

the

'lacks'

in the already

existing

tradition

of

'history

from

below' that

is, of

some

strands of

Marxist history.

Early Marxian

history, as

Elizabeth

Fox-Genovese

and

Eugene. D

Genovese

observe,

was com-

mitted less to recording the totality of

social life

than to the

classes that

contend-

ed

for

state power,

and its

major contribu-

tions to history

lay in

its documentation

and chronicling

of

this struggle

in its

economic

and political

aspects.

Social

history,

rather than

being a

history of

social life

in

all

its multitudinous

aspects,

thus tended to

be a history of

organised

labour

or the

history of the socialist

move-

ment and,

as such, "it could,

by its

manifestation

of names, dates,

and

generously

sprinkled

initials,

rival a

history of

monarchs or

of bourgeois

political parties".They conclude correctly

Economic

and

Political

Weekly

September

11

1993

1931

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3/7

that a

socialist

sensibility,

of itself, "could

not suffice

to. break through

the metho-

dological

hegemony

of

accepted

historical

practice,'

['The

Political

Crisis of Social

History'

in

Fruits

of

Merchant

Capital:

Slavery

and

BourgeoisProperty

n

the

Rise

and

Expansion

of Capitalism, p

180].

It is

this

methodological

hegemony,

insofar as it continues

to foreground

economics

and

marginalise

culture,

that

subaltern historians,

drawing upon

anthropological,

linguistic,

and

psychological

theories

and

data, appeared

to

repudiate,

not Marxism

itself.

Thus,

when

Dipesh Chakrabarty,

n his

study of

the working

conditions of

jute

workers

n

Calcutta from, 1890-1940, proposed

that

such

a

study

could not

stop

at the

purely

economic

but

"must

push

itself into

the

realm

of

working

class

culture',

he

clarified immediately

that

in

insisting

on

the

importance

of

the cultural dimension

of worlCing

lass

history,

he was

arguing

with

Marx, not against

him

['Conditions

for Knowledge of WorkingClass Condi-

tions: Employers,

Government,

and

the

Jute'

Workers of

Calcutta'

in

Subaltern

Studies

I,

1983, p

259].

So

far

so

good.

We were

going

to

witness,

it seemed, the birth

of a true

'history

from

below'

a

social

history

that

would

add

a new

dimension

to

class strug-

gle by

presenting

the

totality

of

society

in

all

its

inter-connectedness

and

density

of

emotional, psychological,

and material

lifc

At

a more immediate

and

personal

level,

I was

going

to see and understand

the

Baba

Karak

Singhs

of

1857,

those who

saw in the uprising a chance to secure a

place

for themselves

and

their

children to

come

in

the colonial

order,

as

well as

those

who, for

a

variety

of reasons, were engag-

ed

in a

mortal

struggle against

that

order,

those who,

for

instance,

William Russell,

reporter

or

7he

Times,

saw

as

he

followed

Colin

Campbell

en

route

to

Lucknow:

"Look

Look

The

woods are

alive

with

men

in

white

running

back

toward

Lucknow

See that stream of

horsemen

rushing towards the Kakraal

bridge "

and

the

faces close

up-"the

slight, tall,

dark-coloured Hindu"

with the

shattered

leg

of whom

Russell

observed

with

clinical

interest: "The blood does not show as

much on

the dark skin

as

on

the white"

[My

Indian

Mutiny Diary,

p

86].

The

crowds

and individuals that Russell

saw

were all fighting

the colonial power of the

British.Were

hey

all

fighting for

the

same

reasons?

Or

did their

struggle

encompass

a

variety

of

congruent and

conflicting

motives?

The

promise,

I

must

report with some

disappointment,

proved to be brighter

than the actual achievementsof

subaltern

historiography

demonstrate, for

reasons

whichwill be explained

n a later

section

of this

paper.

I will now

proceed

to

the

events

of

the

uprising

itself

and

the

main

contours

of

colonialist

and nationalist

ver-

sions of the

meaning of these events.

BRIEF NOrE ON THE

EVENTS

OF

THE

UPRISING

What is called the 'sepoy mutiny' by

colonialist historians and 'the first warof

independence by nationalist,brokeout on

May 10, 1857,

in

Meerut,

a

British can-

tonment about

36 miles

north-east

of

Delhi,

after

a

series of

telling incidents

in

Dum

Dum,

near

Calcutta,

resulting

from

rumours

about

cartridges

soaked in cow

and

pork

fat.

The

most dramatic of such

incidents occurred

on

Sunday,

March

29,

when General

Hearsey,

the

offrcer com-

manding the presidency

division,

was in-

formed by

a

young lieutenantabout a riot

in

the

Indian

lines.

The cause

of

the

disturbance was

Mangal Pandey,

a

sepoy,

who seemed to be under the

influence of

some intoxicatingdrug and was "rampag-

ing about with a loaded

musket"'

houting

to his

fellow

sepoys:

"Come

out,

you

bain-

chutes,

the

Europeans

are here

Why

aren't

you getting ready? It's

for

our

religion From

biting these cartridges wv

shall

become infidels. Get

ready

Turnout

all

of

you You

have incited

me to do this

and now

you bainchutes, you will not

follow

me "

[cited

n

Christopher

Hibbert,

The Great

Mutiny, p 68].

Mangal Pandey

was

restrained and

overpowered

with

the

help of a Muslim

sepoy,

Shaikh

Paltu, tried,

and

sentenced

to death.

When asked

to

explain his con-

duct,

he

readily

admitted he

had

been

tak-

ing

bhang

(hashish)

and

opium

of

lateb

but

refused to

give

the

names

of

any per-

sons who had

'incited'

him to

mutiny:

"Of

my

own free

will".

he

answeredwhen

ask-

ed who

had made him do

what

he had

done. Later,during

the

course of the

war,

all

rebels

were called

'pandys

after

Mangal Pandey.

Thus

Russell

makes

the

following

observations

in

My Indian

Mutiny

Diary

"I

had a canter

about Pan-

dy's deserted

trenches"

[p

861

and "In all

my

wanderings today

I

saw only three or

four

'pandies'

in

extremis"

[p

87].

What happened in Meerut on the day

before the

sepoys

mutinied

also

had to do

with greased

cartridges and the fear of

pollution and loss of

religion.

A

parade

of the 3rd

Native

Light Cavalry

had been

ordered for the

morning

of

the

6th

of

May.

When

cartridges

were

passed

out,

86

of

the

sepoys

refused

to

accept them,

despite persuasion

or

threats

by

the

brigadier.

A

court

of

inquiry was im-

mediately held;

the 86

men

were

tried,

condemned,

and

sentenced

to 10

years

m-

prisonment with

hard labour.

The

sentences were read out on the

parade

ground

before an

assembly of

1,700

British

troops, with

guns and rifles load-

ed, and

a smaller

number of

Indian

troops. They were

stripped off

their

uniforms,

their boots

were removed,

and

their

ankles shackled.

The mutiny broke

out

the

following

evening, with one

group

of

sepoys free-

ing the 86

convicted men from the new

gaol, and another

opening the doors of

the old gaol to

let out 800 prisoners. The

sepoys

were joined by civilians

and, later,

by men

from

surrounding villages,

armed

with

whatever

weapons they could

lay

their

hands on.

According to later British

accounts, the

town was

soon

in

flames,

sepoys and

civilians

looted stores

and

smashed the

contents

of

wineshops. By

next

morning, May

11, about 50

British

men, women, and

children were

dead,

and

the

mutinous

troops

had

marched

into

Delhi, where

they presented

themselves

before Bahadur

Shah,

the

82-year

old

Moghul king, descendant of the

power-

ful Moghul dynasty and now pensioner

of

the

British,

and

asked him to

assume

leadership of the

rebellion.

Thus

began

the

rebellion

which

was to

spread

across all the

major

stations,

n

the

north-western

provinces

and in

Oudh

and

beyond,

was joined by

civilians

peasants),

and

lasted well into

November 1859.

Within a

month of the

Meerutmutiny,

he

British held

only

the fort at

Agra,

a

few

entrenchmentsat

Kanpur,

and

the

residen-

cy

at Lucknow. Lord

Canning,

governor-

general, was to write on June

19,

1857:"In

Rohilcund

and

the

Doab

from

Delhi to

Cawnpore and Allahabad the country is

not

only

in

rebellion

against us,

but

is

utterly

lawless.

Every

man's

hand

is

against

his

neighbour's,

and

nothing

but

our

presence here

in

force

and the

patient

hunting

out

and

exemplarypunishmentof

every

mutineer and rebel

will

restorecom-

plete

order"

[cited

in Thomas

Metcalfe,

The

Aftermath

of

Revolt:India

1857-1870,

p

49].

For

both colonialist

and nationalist

historians

of

the

rebellion,

the

primary

material

for

reconstruction of

the

events

of

the rebellion

and

its

meaning

is

the

body

of

memoirs,

journals,

reminiscences,

histories, and personal narratives that

began

to

make their

appearance

even

before

the rebellion

was

defeated,

and

which swelled

into a veritable

flood dur-

ing the

succeeding decades of

the

19th

century.

The entire

corpus

of

this

primary

material is

the work of

British.

ad-

ministrators, military

staff and officers,

soldiers, reporters,

and civilians who

were

in

some

way

connected

with

or

actually

participated

n

the

war.

Only

one

conten-

porary

account

by

an Indian

exists,

that

by

Sir

Sayyid

Ahmed Khan in his 'An

Essay on the Causes

of the Indian

Revolt'

1932

Economic

and

Political

Weekly

September 11,

1993



4/7

[1860].

The

point of view

of

the rebels

sur-

vives

only in

the correspondence

by

rebel

leaders

with representatives

of the

col-

onial

state [e g,

Nana

Saheb's

Ishiahar

to

the Queen

of England,

April

26,

1859]

or

in

proclamations

addressed

by

rebel

leaders

to their

followers

(e,g,

the

1857

proclamation

of Khan

Bahadur

Khan,

nawab

of Bareilly, suggesting

terms

on

which Hindus and Muslims could recon-

cile

their differences

and combine

to

over-

throw

the British).

The thousands

of

rebel

sepoys

and

peasants

(who

often

came

from

the same villages

or even the

same

families)

are- present

in the

primary

material

only by

their

total and

complete

silence.

COLONIALIST

AND

NATIONALIST

HISTORIOGRAPH

Y

Interpretation,

Frederic

Jameson

says,

can

be construed

as an essentially

al-

legorical

act,

which

consists

in re-writing

a given text in terms of.a particular inter-

pretive

"master-

code";

furthermore,

his

interpretation

is not

"anisolated

act,

but

takes place

within

a Homeric

battlefield,

on which

a host

of interpretive

ptions

are

either.

openly

or

implicitly

in conflict"

[Jameson,

'Preface,

in The

Political

Un-

conscious,

pp

10,

13].

The

voice of

the

Indian

rebels

being

silent

in the 1857

uprising,

the ideological

battlefield

was

not,

in

any

sense

of the

term,

a battlefield

at all

but an

uncontested

territory

in

-which

the

allegories

of the

dominant

group

could

have

free and

wide-ranging

play. Thus George Trevelyan, on of the

governor

of Madras,

is

transported,

literally,

back

to a

Homeric

battlefield

in

the

following:

"There

s much

in common

between

Leonidas dressing

his

hair before

he went

to

his last

fight,

and Colvin

laughing

over

his rice

and

salt

while

bullets pattered

on the

wall

like hail.

As

in the

days

of old

Homer,

cowards

gain

neither

honour

nor

safety"

[cited

in S B

Chaudhari,

Exglish

Historical Writings,

p

265].

And

G

B Malleson,

the

anonymous

author

of The

Mutiny

of the

Bengal

Army

and later,

with

Kaye,

of The

Indian

Mutiny

of

1857 [1891],

incor-

porates

the

victory

of

the

British in the

war

into the

larger

history

of

British

vic-

tories:

"the spirit

that

had

animated

.Raleigh,

that

had

inspired

Drake,

that had

given

invincible

force

to the

soldiers

of

Cromwell,

that

had dealt

the

first blow

to

the conqueror

of Europe,

lived

in these

men.

It was

that

spirit

born

of freedom

which

filled their

hearts

with

the convic-

tion

that being

Englishmen,

they

are

bound

to

conquer"

[cited

in S B

Chaudhari,

p 269].

All

of this leads

to

the

final,

indisputablemeanin~g

f the

con-

flict,

as allegorised

by an

American

mis-

sionary

R

B Minturn

in From

New

York

to Delhi,

by wav

of

Rio De

Janeiro,

Australia,

and

China,

1858:

"Asiatic

courage

is

of one

kind, European

of

another,

and the former

bow before

the

latter...lf

one

thing

has

been

demonstrated

by the

recent

mutiny,

t is the

indescribable

moral

nferiority

of the

Asiatic

races"'

And

then,

like Trevelyan,

Minturn

too

is

transported, not to the Homeric bat-

tlefield,

but

into a

kind

of

ecstasy

of

gratitude:

"May

Heaven

bless

the

British

Nation

May

God savethe

British

Queen

Ah Yes

And let every

lover of

liberty

and

civilisation...

in

our

own happy

American

say,

from the depths

of

his

heart,

Amen "

[cited

in S

B

Chaudhari, p

263].

When

the

battle

was joined

by Indian

nationalists,

the

meaning

of the

conflict

underwent

a

radical change.

It

was

now

symbolic

of the

love of liberty

and

the

resentment

against

oppression

that burn-

ed

in the heart

of

every

Indian.

In the

centennial

publication,

Rebellion:

1857,

P C Gupta,authorof Nana Sahib and the

Rising at

Cawnpore,

1963,

writes

that

although

references

to

the

uprising

in

Hindi

literature

were few,

references

o

the

economic

plunder

and exploitation

were

many.

One becomes

aware,

he says,

in

these writings

of

a. constant

feeling

of

humiliation

and

misery

seeping

through

all modern

Hindi

literature,

a "feeling

of

sorrow

that

this great

land

has been

humbledand

laid

waste

by the

foreigner".

It is a feeling

that

comes

through,

as

well,

in

the folk

tradition,

witness the follow-

ing

Bhojpuri

song:

The barkof the foreigner s now reeling

The country

is

sunk

in

poverty;

In

midstream

his bark

reels.

Famine

and disease

increase

n the land,

The clouds

of

trouble rumble;

In the river

of sorrow

hereare

fathomless

waters,

The

winds

of

tyranny

blow fiercely

across

the land.

The ruler-pilot

s drunken-mad;

We

appealto

him, but

he

says not a

word.

0

foreigner,

your

boat

is doomed;

Your funeral procession

begins

on

the

river

[from

Krishna

Deo Upadhyaya

Bhojpuri

Gram-geet, pp 383-84 in Rebellion: 1857,

p

233].

Both versions

of

the uprising

follow,

broadly speaking,

the same

narrativepat-

tern:

causes of

the

uprising,

the events of

the

uprising

itself,

and the aftermath

of

the

uprising.

Thus John Williams Kaye's

History of

the Sepoy

War 3

vols), 1867,

a source book

for all subsequent

histories

of the

war,

offers

a detailed

account

of

all the

mutinies which preceded

1857,

describes

the heavy-handed

manner

in

which the

government

tampered

with

the

pay

of the sepoys,

criticises

Dalhousie's

annexation

of

Awadh

and his alienation

of the Indian

elite groups,

and

points

to

economic

factors

like

over-assessment

of

land revenue

and resumption

of old

hereditary

grants

as

causes

of the revolt.

Among

the cultural

factors,

he lists

as a

prime

reason

the

misguided

policy,

resulting

from

a well-intentioned

desire

to

disseminate

Christian

enlightenment

in a

superstitious

and decadent

society,

of

tampering

with

native

customs

oand

'superstitions'.

In the

same

manner,

the

Indian

historian

R

C Majumdar's,

The

Sepoy

Mutiny

and

the

Revolt

of 1857

[1957], after

a chapter

entitled

'Expansion

of

British

Dominions'.

lists like

causes

of

the uprising:

ruin

of trade

and industry,

oppressive

agrarian

policy,

discontent

due

to social and

religious

causes,

discontent

due

to the administrative

system,

and

finally,discontent

and

disaffection

among

the sepoys.

With some

differences

in em-

phasis,

the causes

of the revolt

n both

ver-

sions cover

the same territory,

the col-

onialist being more sensitive to British

sensibilities

and constraints,

the

na-

tionalist

more

understanding

of the rebels'

frustration

and anger.

The aftermath

of

the revolt shows

more

striking

divergences,

with the colonialist

version

generally

emphasising

the

prevalence

among the

British of reason

and discipline

after

the

'excesses' of

'naturalpassions'

of

revenge

and demands

of

'blood

for blood',

and

the nationalist

detailing

the excesses

of the British

themselves.

Thus Malleson

in

his

The

Indian

Mutiny of

1857, concludes

his nar-

rative with the following paragraph

intended

to "disabuse

the

minds

of those

who may

have

been

influenced

by

rumours current

at

the period

as

to the

nature of the

retaliation

dealt

out to

the

rebels by the

British soldiers

in the

hour

of their triumph":

I haveexamined ll those

rumours-I

have

searched ut

the details

attending

he stor-

ming

of Delhi,

of Lakhnao,

and

of

Jhansi-and

I can emphatically

declare

that,

not

only

was the retaliation

not ex-

cessive,

it did not exceed

the

bounds

necessary

o ensure the safety

of the con-

querors.

Unfortunately

war is

war.

It

is

meeting n contact of two bodies of men

exasperated

gainst

each other,

alike-con-

vinced

that victory

can only

be gained

by

the destruction

of

the opponent.

Under

such circumstances

t

is

impossible

o

give

quarter...beyond

hedeaths

he inflicted

n

fair

fight,

the

Britishsoldier

perpetrated

no unnecessary

slaughter...

IPP

405-06].

Nationalist

historians tend.

to take a

somewhat

more

lingering

and bitter

look

at what

appeared

o

have

been,

from

most;

accounts,

a

somewhat

more

bloody

affair

than

Malleson's

'fair fight' would

have

it.

Thus R C Majumdar,

whose

history is,

in

Economic

and

Political Weekly September

11,

1993

1933



5/7

fact,

far

from a

celebration

of

the

rebellion as

the

'first

war of

Indian in-

dependence',

describes

in

detail,

drawing

upon British

accounts,

the

wholesale

massacres

that followed

each

successive

British

campaign in

Allahabad,

Peshawar,

Cawnpore,

Lucknow,

Delhi,

Jhansi,

Ujnalla,

and

Gwalior.

He

quotes,

for ex-

ample,

from Lt

Col

T

Rice

Holmes',

A

history of the Indian Mutiny, and of the

disturbances which

accompanied it

among the civil

population,

1883:

ac-

counts

of

trials in

Delhi

by

the

military

court:

Nativeswere

brought

n

batches

o

be tried

by a

Military

Commission,

or

by

Special

Commissioners,

each

one of

whom

had

been

nvested

by

the

supreme

Government

with

full

powers

of life

and

death.

These

judges

were in

no

mood to show

mercy.

Almost

all

who were

ried

were

condemn-

ed,

and

almost all

who were

condemned

were

sentenced

to

death. A

four-foot

square gallows was

erected

in

a con-

spicuousplace in the city and five or six

culprits

were

hanged

every

day.Englishof-

ftcers

used

to

sit

by,

puffing

at

their

cigars,

and

look on

at the

convulsive

truggles

of

the

victims

[cited

in

Majumdar,p

214].

And

from

Lt Vivian

Majendie's

Up

among

the

Pandies

or, a Years

Service in

India;

1859:

At

the

time

of the

captureof

Lucknow-a

season

of

indiscriminate

massacre-such

distinction

[between

rebel and

innocent]

was not

made, and

the

unfortunate

who

fell

into the

hands of

our

troops

was

made

short

work

of-sepoy or

Oude

villager

t

matterednot,-

no

questions

were

asked;

his skin was black, and did not that suf-

fice? A

piece of

rope

and the

branchof

a

tree,

or a

rifle

bullet

through

his brain

soon

terminated

he poor

devil's

existence

[cited

in

Majumdar,p

2151.

The

last

words

in

any

battle,

however,

belong to

the

victorious, and in

this in-

stance

they come

from

Kayes

summation

of

the

meaning

of

1857:

The

story

of

the Indian

Rebellion

f 1857

is

perhapsthe

most

single

illustrationof

our

great

national

character

ever

yet

recorded n

the

annals

of our

country.

It

was

the

vehement

self-assertion of

thie

Englishman hat produced hisconflagra-

tion; it

was

the

same

vehement self-

assertion that

enabled

him,

by

God's

blessings,

o

trample t

out. It

was a

noble

egoism,

mighty,alike

n

doingand in

suf-

fering...(pp

89-90).

After

such

resounding

triumphalism,

the

words

of P

C

Joshi,

editor of

the

1857

centennial

volume,

make for

poor con-

solation:

"The 1857

heritage

played a

big

part

in

giving

a

particular

orientation

to

Indian

national

literature

in

our

various

languages.

It

has

supplied

Indian

writers

with

dramatic

incidents

of

suffering,

struggle,

and

sacrifice,

and

noble

dramnatic

themes"

[Rebellion,

1857,

p vii].

HOW

THE

PASF

CONTINUES N

THE

PRESENT,

COLONIAL

STYLE

Eric

Stokes's

The

Peasant

Armed

[1985]

is a

series of

essays

on

the

magnitude and

natureof civil

rebellion-the

participation

of

peasants,

that is-in

the

1857

revolt.

Stokes,

whose

life-long

professional in-

terest and research in Indian

agrarian

society has

influenced

a

whole

generation

of

Indian

and

British

historians,

does

not

discount

the

place of

emotion in

historical

research.In

fact,

although

observing with

a

degree of

sadness, the

excess

of

national

resentment

which

resulted,

after in-

dependence,

in

the

replacement

by Tantia

Topi's

effigy

of

Marochettis

weeping

angel

over

the well

down

which

"Nana's

minions

had

cast

the

butchered

remains of

some

200

British

women

and

children"(p

2), he

nevertheless

maintains

that

it is

almost a

pre-condition

of

the

historian's

activity

that the past should remain charged with

emotion.

However,

he

warns

"such

emo-

tion

almost

imprisons him

[the

historian]

within

the

framework

of

its

own

lines of

interpretation"

p 4). The

way out

of this

prison

is

through

a

calm,

judicious,

and

objective

evaluationof

empirical

evidence,

to

the

gathering of

which

Stokes

devoted

his

entire

career as

a

historian.

He

sometimes

complained,

as his

editor

C A

Bayly

reports,

"that he

was

'ploughing a

lonely furrow'

in

wrestling

with

the

com-

plexities of

Indian

tenurial

forms..."

(p.

226), but

wrestle

he

did,

and

the

evidence that he has brought to bear on

his

central

thesis

that

the

complexity

and

variability

of

social

structures

and

rela-

tions in

Indian

rural

society

in

1857

do not

allow

simple

answers,

is

formidable.

But

is

empirical

evidence,

n

fact, a

way

out of

the

prison of

emotion?

It

would

seem

not.

Three

short

passages,

all

from

the

first

chapter of

Stokes'

The

Peasant

Armed,

illustrate the

point.

This

chapter,

along

with

the

second,

was

the

last

to be

written,

according

to

Bayly.

In

contrastto

the

subsequent

chapters,

which are

analytic and

rather

dry,

these two

chapteis

are

narrative n

form

and

charged

with an

emotion that belie the

'objective

scholar's

declared

neutrality.

Here, in

Bayly's

words,

"the

human

drama

and

the

mythology of

the

revolt,

carefully

excluded

from

the

chapters

of

secial

history,

reappear

with

drive

and

conviction"

[The

Peasant

Armed,

p

241J.

They

certainly

do.

Here's

how

the

first

lines

of

Chapter

1,

'The

Military

Dimen-

sion:

British

Strategy

and

Tactics',

read:

On

Sunday-,

10

May

1857,

in

that

brief

hour

befor

darkness,

when

the

descen-

ding

fireball

of

thesun

ignites

the

Indian

sky in

the

bloody

hues

of

sunset,

men

of

the

20th

and

11th

Bengal

Native

Infantry

broke

nto

mutinyat

the

great

military

ta-

tion

of

Meerut.

By

the

time

the

European

troops...

(p

17).

The

narrative

thus

begins,

not

with

an

explanatory

analysis

of

events

immediate-

ly

preceding

the

outbreak,

but

with

the

outbreak

itself,

which

erupts, in

the

absence

of

any

background

information,

with the force of a natural cataclysm. I

move

now

to

the next

passage

on

the

same

page

where, after

talking

about

how

the

'mob'

quickly, as

soon

as

the

sepoys

had

broken

through

the

'restraints

of

discipline',

began

'plundering

and

burn-

ing

the

European

bungalows

and

murder-

ing

their

inhabitants'

and,

because

of

the

inability of

the

European

force

to

pursue

the

mutineers

(since

they

had

to

look

after

the

safety

of

the

European

families)

were

able

to

enter

Delhi

and

suborn

the

old

emperor

Bahadur

Shah

to

their

side,

Stokes

concludes:

Thus within the space of twenty-four

hours,

what

began

as

merely

he

latest

and

ugliest

of

a

long

series of

mutinous in-

cidents in

the

Bengal

army had

swelled

monstrously

into

full-scale

political

rebellion.

Delhi, the

capital

of

the

ancien

regime, had

assumed

the

leadership

of

a

movement

o li

berate ndia

from

the

white

man's

yoke

(pp

18-19).

He

does

not

conclude,

exactly,

because

the

next

sentence

points to

what

could

have

been

had

the

British, even at

this

point,

been

in

a

position to

act

faster:

Even

then

the

rebellioncould

have been

scotched

swiftly as a

snake or

at

least

drivenback into its hole. But it was not

until 8

June

that

the

British

were

able

to

get a

force

behind

the

walls

of

Delhi.

The

interval

was

deadly

(p

19).

To

interpret,

as

Jameson

points

out, it

"to

restructure

the

problematics of

ideology, of

the

unconscious

and

desire,

of

representation,

of

history,

and

of a

cultural

production, around

the

all-

informing

process of

narrative...

which

s]

the

central

function

or

instance of

the

human

mind"

[Political

Unconscious,

p

131.

What

we

have in

these

opening

passages is

the

story

of

"what

happened"

and an allegory of "what could have

been". It

is a

story that

could

be

inter-

preted

as

a

dispassionate

representation

f

the

sequence of

events

strung

together

with

"By

the

time..."

"As

soon

as...:'

"by

ten

o'clock...:'

etc, were it

not

for

the in-

terpretive

words

and

images that

crowd

their

way

into

the

discourse.

Even

the first

paragraph, which

may

be

slided

over as

a

theatrical

piece of

rhetoric,4understan-

dable in

a

scholar

who,

in

his

own

words,

for so

long

'ploughed

a

lonely

furrow,

and,

as

a

professional

historian, had to

follow

the

decorum

of

professional

prose

(academic

drone)-even

the

first

1934

Economic

and

Political

Weekly

September

11,

1993



6/7

paragraph

s

saturated

with

images which

set

the stage

for the events

to

follow

("descending

fireball".

"bloody hues")

and define

the character

of the

rebels and

the rebellion

("broke"

into

mutiny,

like

waters crashing through a dam, and

"fled"' like thieves

in the

night).

The

breaking waters

engulf all,

the

thieves

"murder"

and

"plunder"

and the flood

then swells "monstrously" into full-scale

"political

rebellion"

to throw

off,

under

an old king's impotent

leadership,

the

"white man's yoke'

(faint sneer?). Final-

ly (frustrated desire?)

the

"what

could

have been of

history"

if the

"snake"

could

have

been

swiftly

"scotched'

or

(damn it )

"at

least

driven

back

into its

hole". So

much for

neutrality.

THE

SUBALTERN

NTERVENTION

The subalternhistorians'

re-writing

of

history

has two

objectives: (1)

The

dis-

mantling

of

elitist historiography by

decoding biases and value judgments in

records, estimonies,

and

narratives

of the

ruling-classes; (2)

The

restoration

to

subaltern

groups

of their

'agency',

their

role

in

history

as

'subjects',

with

an

ideology

and a

political agenda

of

their

own.

The

first

objective

has

yielded

some

interesting

and

important insights as,

for

exampmle

n Guha's

readings

of the

official

recordsof the Barasatpeasant uprising of

1831, the Santhal

(tribal)

revolt of

1855,

and the rebeilion

of

1857

in 'The

Prose

of

Counter-Insurgency'

Subaltern

Studies

11, pp 140,

19831.

The

second

objective

has, on the positive

side, opened up a v'ast

area of research

and

study generally

regarded by historians

as the

proper

sphereof anthropologists, ethnographers,

and

psychologists,

e

g,

the

significance

of

the

symbolic aspects

of

ritual,

of

the

in-

stitutionalcodification

of

religious beliefs,

of

the natureof premodern

forms

of

con-s

munication, of the

density

of

everyday

material life. See,

for

example, Gyan

Pandey's analysis of the religious aspects

of

peasant

demands

in 'Peasant Revolt

and

Indian Nationalist:

The

Peasant

Movement in Awadh 1919-22'

[Subaltern

Studies

I,

pp 166-85,

19821.

But if this kind of opening up is, on

principle,desirable,

and

even necessary, ts

results, as

evidenced by the actual work

of

the subaltern group itself, have been,

at

best, problematic, at worst, tediously

neo-antiquarian' and remarkably un-

remarkable in their

banality. These pro-

blems derive from the

contradictions

and

confusions inherent

n the

very concept of

subalternity as a

socio/political category.

The

first problem

has to do with the

proposition

regarding the 'autonomous

terrain' of subaltern consciousness and

political activity. This autonomy is not

total:

as Guha

notes,

this domain

co-exists

with

that of elite groups

and, consequent-

ly,

bears its

marks. But there are,

he

in-

sists,

nonetheless

"vast areas

in the

life

and consciousness

of the people

which

were

[in

colonial India]

never integrated

into

their

[the

elite groups] hegemony"

['Historiography

of

Colonial

India',

Subaltern Studies,

Vol 1, pp

5-6]. Very

likely not,

but to make

a leap

from this

observation

to the

conclusion

that there

exists

such a

phenomenon

as 'subaltern

mentality' is surely

a new

kind of elitism,

based on discredited

and

untenable

anthropological

theory Furthermore,

t

is

not just

subaltern groups

who are

'entrap-

ped',

as our historians suggest,

in the old

culture of religious

beliefs

and customs;

the ruling

classes

in a specific conflict

have

recourse

to and deploy

beliefs and values

from

the same source.

The question

then

is,

why do the former

fail and

the latter

succeed?

Not

just

because

of the

'men-

tality'

of the poor, decidedly,

but because

of the commanding advantage of power

the dominant classes possess.

In

short,

there seems

to be greater emphasis

in

subaltern historiography

on

the limita-

tions

of the

mentality

of the poor

as a fac-

tor

in the

explanation

of

their failed

strug-

gles

than on the fact

that

they

also lack

the

instruments

of

coercion

that their

adversaries

in the

struggle

own.

The notion of

'autonomy'

furthermore,

while

being empirically

untenable,

also

leads at times

into the kind of

embarrass-

ing

difficulties Gautam

Bhadra, for

in-

stance,

has to

explain

away

when he makes

Manulla, a relatively prosperous head-

man, represent

in

the poem

Kantanama

the

culture

of the subordinate classes.

There

must have

been,

Bhadra concedes

as an

afterthought,

"important

and in-

teresting

differences between

the

thoughts

of a

poor peasant

and those of a Mandal

[headman]",

and Kantananm onsequent-

ly

cannot

be

made

to the 'thought-world'

of

the latter.

But

Bhadra

does,

nonethe-

less,

make

it

do

so, by

introducing

into the

presumably

'autonomous terrain'

of

subaltern

mentality

some elements

of elite

thought

and beliefs:

However, it seems to me that we would be

erring

in

the

opposite

direction

to

think

that there could be no

exchange

or shar-

ing

of ideals

or

ideas

between classes,

or

that

classes,

even

when

they

were

in

con-

flict,

did

not

learn from each other...

The

cognitive

view that Manulla had of the

world may easily have

been shared, though

not necessarily ^ holly, by

a poor peasant

['The Mentality

of

Subalternity',

Subaltern

Studies,

Vol

VI,

pp

89-901.

The second

and even

more

serious pro-

blem has to

do with

the

use

of the

terms

'subaltern'

nd

'elite'as descriptive

of con-

tending social

forces w hich are,

in

actuality, far more

complex

than this

sim-

ple dichotomy would

suggest.

At no

time

in any historical

conflict

have

the

material

interests of the

entire spectrum

of

the rul-

ing elite classes on

the

one

hand, and

of

the contending

classes on the

other, been

identical. Subaltern

historians

recognise

this, but

in their

actual analysis,

'subalter-

nity' as

a

theoretical concept

seems to

lend

itself

more

as a

description

of

identity

as

an oppressed group

rather

than

dif-

ferences

in

degree

in the

kind

of

oppres-

sion

suffered,

or

the

divergence

of

interest

within that group once a particularsource

of

oppression

is removed.

Gautam Bhadra once

again provides

a

telling example

in

his

'Four

Rebels of

Eighteen-Fifty-Seven'

Selected

Subaltem

Studies,

1857, pp 129-75],

the

objective

of

which essay, n the author'swords,was "to

seek

after

and

restore

the

specific subjec-

tivity of

the rebels"

(p 175).

He

begins by

pointing

out the 'curious

complicity' of

colonialist, nationalist,

and

radical

historians, including EricStokes, in deny-

ing ordinary rebels an independent role in

the rebellion

of 1857

("Eric Stokes':

Bhadra notes, "in his otherwise admirable

work on the local

background of the

popular upsurge,

has also

described

the

rural

insurgency

of 1857

as

essentially

elitist in

character,

or the

nuss of

popula-

tion

appeared

to have

played

[in

his

account]

little or no

part

or

at the

most

tamely followed

the behests

of

caste

superiors",

pp 129-30).

But who

does he

then

offer as

representative

of

'ordinary

people'?

A

wildly

eclectic

group, who

seem to have hadnothing in common with

each other

except

their

'subalternity'

in

relation

to the colonial

British:

Shah

Mal,

a

'malik'

(owner, landlord)

of a

portion

of

a

village;

Devi

Singh,

master of

14

villages; the tribal, Gonoo, an ordinary

cultivator;

and

finally,

Maulvi Ahmadul-

lah

Shah,

a member of 'a

grandee family

of

Carnatic. The rationale

for

grouping

them? Their

'ordinariness';

"It

is

the

'ordinariness'

of these rebels

which

con-

stitutes

their

distinction. Devi

Singh could

hardly

be

distinguished

rom his

followers,

Shah

Mal was a small

zamindar

among

many

and Gonoo

was a

common KoL

Even the Maulvi was

hardly

a learnedman

and

knew

only

'little Arabic

and

Persian"

(pp 174-75).

This

is

surely

naivete of

the

most

extraordinarysort. Was

Gonoo's

in-

terest

in

opposing

the

colonial

order

the

same

as

that of Devi

Singh

and

Shah Mal?

The

alien masters and the

native, as far

as

Gonoo was

concerned, extracted

revenue equally

ferociously

from

his

labour and that of his fellow

tribals, did

they

not? Bhadra does admit to

dif-

ferences in the social, economic, and

ideological background

and orientation of

his four rebels but, he asserts, "pitted as

Economic and

Political

Weekly -September 11, 1993

1935



7/7

they were against the s..me enemy at the

same historical morient, they shared,

thanks

to

the logic of

insurrection,

some

common characteristics'

(p 174).

And

wherein lies the source of this

commonality? It lies in "their

perception

and day-to-day experience

of the

alien

state in

his

[the

rebel]

mmediate

surroun-

dings.." (p 175).

And

what, finally,

s their

histonrcalmportance?That they "asserted

themselves through

the

act

of

insurgency

and took

the initiative denied-to them

by

the

dominant

classes;

and in

doing

so

they

put

their

stamp

on the course

of the

rebellion, hereby

breaking

he

long

silence

imposed

on them

politically

and

culturally

by

the

ruling

classes"

(p 174).

Bhadra

fails

to

ask

how landlords and

proprietors

like

Devi

Singh

and

Shah

Mal,

had

they

suc-

ceeded,

would

have dealt

with

Gonoo's

in-

terests

after the

conclusion

of

the war.

If

a socialist

sensibility,

as the

Genoveses

correctly observe,

does not

in

itself

guarantee

a

break.

from

the

hegemony

of

elitist historical practices,

neither,

it

seems, does

a

confused and

romanticespousal of the

'people'shistory'

as a

history

of

heroic resistance

by

the

op-

pressed, regardless

of their

political

and

material

nterests.Thus the

only

difference

between the

nationalist

V

D

Savarkar's

The irdian War

of

Independence, 1857,

(1909) and Bhadra's

Four Rebels' is that,

instead of the well known figures of Nana

Saheb,

lTntia

Tope, and

Rani

Jhansi,

we

have those of

'ordinary people'

like Shah

Mal and Gonoo who, in terms of

class,

have

little in common, but who,. as

'subalterns presumably sharea common

'mentality' derived from an 'autonomous

culture'.

Subaltern social

history,

in

the final

analysis, suffers from

the same

kind

of

'politically anesthetised idealism' that the

Genoveses

note in

the

account

of liberal

history

of

slavery

n

the old

south

which,

in its

celebrationof

black cultural achieve-

ment in

slavery, "abstracts

the

slave ex-

perience almost completely from its

political conditions

of

incipient violence

and

from

that

work

experiencewhich con-

sumed

so

many

of the slaves'

waking

hours..', and, in doing so "denies the

decisive

importance

of

the

master-slave

dialectic-of the

specificity

and

historical-

ly ubiquitous form of class

struggle"

[Elizabeth

Fox-Genovese and

Eugene

D

Genovese,

'Pblitical Crisis

of

Social

History

pp

196-97].

This

retreat from

class

struggle

makes

every

act of

rebellion

by the politically

and

socially

disenfran-

chised

in

a

particular historical context

evidence

of

one

aspect

of subaltern 'men-

tality':

defiance. And

it locates the failure

of this enterprise n the other aspect

of

the same

'mentality': he contradictory

impulse f obedience

o authority.What

seems to

have little or

no

place

in

this

historiography

is

the institutions and

structures of power and economic ex-

ploitation which,

in

their very real and

bloody

exchanges

with

passive

or in-

surgent

masses,

break

bones and

spirits

equally

effectively.

Of what

political

use is

Partha Chater-

jees

assertion that

it would

be

totally

con-

trary to the subaltern historians' prQject

"to go about as though

only the dominant

culture

has

life in

history

and subaltern

consciousness eternally frozen

in its

struc-

ture

of

negation"

['Caste and

Subaltern

Consciousness Subaltern Studies

VI,

1989, pp

206-071

when the

only

comfort

he

offers

us in

his 'own

specific project-

the lessons of the

failure

of the

religious

movement of

Balaram Hadi in

the 1830s

among

the

outcaste

Hadis of

Bengal-is

of

the

presence

in

Balaram's

deviations

from

brahmanical orthodoxy of "an im-

plicit,

barely stated search for a

recogni-

tion whose

signs

lie not

outside,

but within

oneself"? ['Caste and

Subaltern Con-

sciousness'.

p

206].

And what

political

significance

can

we

possibly

find in

Sumit

Sarkar's

xcruciatinglydetailed

analysis of

the

Kalki-Avatar's

ase,

that for

one

night,

the

Chandal

(outcaste)

Prasanna had

not

only

"burst

into and

taken

over a re-

enactment

of

the

myth

by

a brahmin

sadhu and a bhadraloC

gentleman]

disci-

ple,

he

had

appropriated bits of

it, along

with fragments

from epics equally

deferential

in

intent,

to terrorise the

Doyhata bhadralok and make a

wife kick

a

husband on the forehead"

[The

Kalki-

AvatarBikrampur',

Subaltern tudies

VI,

1989, pp 52-53].

It

is not

enough for

subalternhistorians

to

prove, by

recounting

'people's

revolts',

that

the oppressed

have never liked being

oppressed,

or to show that,

when they did

not, their

deviations from the

rituals and

symbols

of

the

dominant culture contain-

ed seeds

of

'incipient'

revolt. The

primary

question, as the

Genoveses

insist, is, to

what extent did

these revolts

and devia-

tions pose a

challenge to the

ruling class?

The

struggle of the

powerless,

if

it is to

have

any political

significance, must be a

struggle

for

changing

the

structures

which

reproduce relations of

power. This re-

quires a

clear-sighted

and

rigorous

scrutiny by the rebellious forces and their

well-wishers alike of the

strengths and

weaknesses of their struggle.

The

powerless

cannot, just by virtue

of

their

indubitably

heroic struggles, become

sub-

jects

of

uncritical

admiration,

nor

can

their

cultural

achievements,

because they

are

the achievements of the

oppressed, be

idealised

without noting

their in-

adequacies. The

Genoveses

observations

on Marx in this

regard

are

to

the point

Marx, concerned with political

goals,

never

mistook

socialist

demands

for

pro-

letarian power for a celebration of

previous

working-class atternsof

life.

He

could

not

afford to: as a

great

revolutionary-

committed o

changing

he

world and raising the

working class to

power, one

of

his

major projects had to

be

precisely

a

ruthless

criticism

of

all

popularmovements nd

classes,

especially

the

working

class,

in

order

to

help

steel

it for battle.

Hence,

he

had to

view

any

attempt

to cover the

blemishes or

exag-

gerate the virtue not

only

as romantic

nonsense but as

counter-revolutionary

politics

[Elizabeth

Fox-Genovese,

Eugene

Genovese,

The

Political Crisis

of

Social

History' in The

Fruits of Merchant

Capital, p 203].

The

subaltern historian, as a

historian of

the

'politics

of

the

people',

would do bet-

ter

justice

to

this

politics,

it

seems,

if

he/she were

to

keep Marx's

purpose

in

mind.

(rhanks

to

my

son

Vivek

Chibber,

who

helped

me

articulatewhat

I

intuitively saw,

but lacked words to

express.]

INDIA-US SECURITY RELATIONS

1947-1990

Emeka

Oliajunwa

pp:viii+181 Rs.

180

An

exhaustive

treatment of the

subject

with

adequately

supportive

facts

and

figures.

Perceptive,

illuminating,

comprehensive.

Available from all

leading book

distributors/sellers,

or

direct

from:

Manager: Chanakya

Publications

F10/14

Model

Town,

Dellhi-11009.

1936

Economic

and

Political

Weekly

September

11,

1993

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Subaltern Consciousness and Historiography of 1857