Colonial/IMPERIALIST Historiography
The
term ‘colonial historiography’ has been used in two senses. One relates to the
history of the colonial countries, while the other refers to the works which
were influenced by colonial ideology of domination. It is in the second sense
that most historians today write about the colonial historiography. In fact,
the practice of writing about the colonial countries by the colonial officials
was related to the desire for domination and justification of the colonial rule.
Therefore, in most such historical works there was criticism of Indian society
and culture. At the same time, there was praise for the western culture and
values and glorification of the individuals who established the empire in
India. The histories of India written by James Mill, Mountstuart Elphinstone,
Vincent Smith and many others are pertinent examples of this trend. They
established the colonial school of historiography which denigrated the subject
people while praising the imperial country.
It
will be an error to homogenise all of British historical writings as uniformly
colonial, since different approaches and interpretative frameworks developed
within the colonial school in course of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
However, there were certain characteristics common to most of the works we have
surveyed till now. However simplistic it may be, it may be useful to sum up
these characteristics:
• An ‘Orientalist’
representation of India was common, promoting the idea of the superiority of
modern Western civilisation; this is a theme recently brought into prominence
by Edward Said and others, but the Indian nationalist intelligentsias had
identified and criticised this trend in British writings from James Mill
onwards.
• The idea that
India had no unity until the British unified the country was commonly given
prominence in historical narratives; along with this thesis there was a
representation of the eighteenth century India as a ‘dark century’ full of
chaos and barbarity until the British came to the rescue.
• Many late
nineteenth century British historians adopted Social Darwinist notions about
India; this implied that if history is a struggle between various peoples and
cultures, akin to the struggle among the species, Britain having come to the
top could be ipso facto legitimately considered to be superior and as
the fittest to rule.
• India was, in
the opinion of many British observers, a stagnant society, arrested at a stage
of development; it followed that British rule would show the path of progress
to a higher level; hence the idea that India needed Pax Britannica.
• The
mythification of heroic empire builders and ‘Rulers of India’ in historical
narratives was a part of the rhetoric of imperialism; as Eric Stokes has
remarked, in British writings on India the focus was on the British
protagonists and the entire country and its people were just a shadowy
background.
• As we would
expect, colonial historiography displayed initially a critical stance towards
the Indian nationalist movement since it was perceived as a threat to the good
work done by the British in India; at a later stage when the movement
intensified the attitude became more complex, since some historians showed
plain hostility while others were more sophisticated in their denigration of
Indian nationalism. In general, while some of these characteristics and
paradigms are commonly to be found in the colonial historians’ discourse, it
will be unjust to
ignore the fact
that in course of the first half of the twentieth century historiography
out-grew them or, at least, presented more sophisticated versions of them.
In essence colonial historiography was part of an
ideological effort to appropriate history as a means of establishing cultural
hegemony and legitimising British rule over India.
Nationalist historians writing on modern period
Nationalist historiography flourished mainly in
dealing with the ancient and medieval periods. It hardly existed for the modern
period and came into being mainly after 1947, no school of nationalist
historians of modern India having existed before 1947. This was in part
because, in the era of nationalism, to be a nationalist was also to be anti-imperialist,
which meant confrontation with the ruling, colonial authorities. And that was
not possible for academics because of colonial control over the educational
system. It became safe to be anti-imperialist only after 1947.
A detailed and scientific critique of colonialism
was developed in the last quarter of the 19th century by non-academic,
nationalist economists such as Dadabhai Naoroji, Justice Ranade, G. V. Joshi,
R. C. Dutt, K. T. Telang, G. K. Gokhale and D. E. Wacha. Several academic
economists such as K. T. Shah, V. C. Kale, C. N. Vakil, D. R. Gadgil, Gyan
Chand, V.K.R.V. Rao and Wadia and Merchant followed in their footsteps in the
first half of the 20th century. Their critique did not find any reflection in
history books of the period. That was to happen only after 1947, and that too
in the 1960s and after.
This critique, however, formed the core of
nationalist agitation in the era of mass movements after 1920. Tilak, Gandhiji,
Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Subhash Bose, for example, relied heavily
upon it. A few historians who referred in passing to the national movement and
nationalist historians after 1947 did not see it as an anti-imperialist
movement. Similarly, the only history of the national movement that was written
was by nationalist leaders such as R.G. Pradhan, A.C. Mazumdar, Jawaharlal
Nehru and Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Post- 1947 historians accepted the legitimacy
of nationalism and the Indian national movement but seldom dealt with its
foundation in the economic critique of the colonialism. They also tended to
underplay, when not ignoring completely, other streams of the nationalist
struggle.
Modern historians have also been divided between
those, such as Tara Chand, who held that India has been a nation-in-the-making
since the 19th century and those who argue that India has been a nation since
the ancient times. At the same time, to their credit, all of them accept
India’s diversity, i.e., its multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and
therefore multi-cultural character. Nationalist historians also have ignored or
severely underplayed inner contradictions of Indian society based on class and
caste or the oppression of and discrimination against women and tribes. They
have also ignored the movements against class and caste oppressions. They have
seldom made an in-depth analysis of the national movement, and often indulged
in its blind glorification. While adopting a secular position and condemning
communalism, they do not make a serious analysis of its character or elements, causation,
and development. Quite often, it is seen merely as an outcome of the British
policy of ‘divide and rule’. They give due space to the social reform movements
but do not take a critical look at them, and often ignore the movements of the
tribal people and the lower castes for their emancipation. As a whole,
historians neglected economic, social and cultural history and at the most
attached a chapter or two on these without integrating them into the main
narrative.
We may make a few additional remarks regarding
nationalist historians as a whole. They tended to ignore inner contradictions
within Indian society. They suffered from an upper caste and male chauvinist
cultural and social bias. Above all they tended to accept the theory of Indian
exceptionalism that Indian historical development was entirely different from
that of the rest of the world. They missed a historical evaluation of Indian
social institutions in an effort to prove India’s superiority in historical
development. Especially negative and harmful both to the study of India’s
history and the political development of modern India was their acceptance of
James Mill’s periodisation of Indian history into Hindu and Muslim periods.
Subaltern Studies
The
Subaltern Studies is the title given to a series of volumes initially
published under the editorship of Ranajit Guha, the prime mover and the
ideologue of the project. It was initially applied to the serfs and peasants in
England during the Middle Ages. Later, by 1700, it was used for the subordinate
ranks in the military. It, however, gained wide currency in scholarly circles
after the works of Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). Gramsci had adopted the term to
refer to the subordinate groups in the society. In his opinion, the history of
the subaltern groups is almost always related to that of the ruling groups. In
addition, this history is generally ‘fragmentary and episodic’.
‘The
word “subaltern” in the title stands for the meaning as given in the Concise
Oxford Dictionary, that is, “of inferior rank”. Making this as a reference
Guha suggested in his first volume that It will be used in these pages as
a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether
this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender and office or in any
other way.’
A little later,
at the end of his opening essay in the volume, he further clarified this term:
‘The terms “people” and “subaltern classes” have been used synonymously
throughout this note. The social groups and elements included in this category
represent the demographic difference between the total Indian population and
all those whom we have described as the “elite”.’
Now there is a general and clear acknowledgement of
basically two phases in the career of the Subaltern Studies. Phase I consists of :a) concern with the
subaltern, i.e., lower, exploited classes; b) criticism of the elite, i.e.,
exploiting classes; and c) influence of Gramscian thought and Marxist social
history and an attempt to work within broader Marxist theory.
In the second phase, there is a clear shift from these concerns. Now:a)
there is an increasing engagement with textual analysis, a shift away from
exploring the history of the exploited people, and more engagement, even though
critical, with elite discourses; and b) Marx and Gramsci are jettisoned in
favour of Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and other postmodernists and
postcolonialists.
First Phase: Elite vs. Subaltern
Influence by Gramscian thought a deliberate attempt
was made to break from both the economic determinism of a variety of Marxist
theory as well as the elitism of bourgeois-nationalist and colonialist
interpretations. The Subaltern Studies soon became the new ‘history from
below’ which did not try to fuse the people’s history with official
nationalism. The aim of the project was manifold :
a) To show the bourgeois and elite character of Congress nationalism
which was said to restrain popular radicalism;
b) To counter the attempts by many historians to incorporate the
people’s struggles in the grand narrative of Indian / Congress nationalism; and
c) To reconstruct the subaltern consciousness and stress its autonomy.
Considering the non-availability of evidences from subaltern sources, it was a
difficult task. To overcome this, the subaltern historians endeavoured to
extract their material from the official sources by reading them ‘against the
grain’.
Second Phase: Discourse Analysis
Over the years, there began a shift in the approach
of the Subaltern Studies. The influence of the postmodernist and
postcolonialist ideologies became more marked. Many writers in the Subaltern
Studies slowly abandoned the earlier adherence to Marxism.
Subalternity as a concept was also redefined.
Earlier, it stood for the oppressed classes in opposition to the dominant
classes both inside and outside. Later, it was conceptualised in opposition to
colonialism, modernity and Enlightenment. There was now an increasing stress on
textual analysis of colonial discourse. The earlier emphasis on the ‘subaltern’
now gave way to a focus on ‘community’. The second phase of the Subaltern
Studies, therefore, not only moves away from the earlier emphasis on the
exploration of the subaltern consciousness, it also questions the very ground of
historical works as such, in line with the postmodernist thinking in the West.
