THE Sixth Subaltern Studies Conference was held at the Giri Institute of Development Studies at Lucknow this year. Under the rubric ‘Fractured Societies, Fractured Histories’, the conference discussed political institutions, nationalism, community, caste, etc.

In his inaugural address, Gyan Pandey pointed out that the Subaltern Studies (SS) have emerged as a powerful critique of the orthodox concept of nationalism and the partisan way of history writing. In recent times, however, the SS have become the critique of history itself, i e, the way in which we negotiate our past and appropriate it for our political purposes.

In his more detailed account of the evolution of SS studies, Partha Chatterjee located the current debate in social sciences in the divergence between the ‘pure’ theory of transition formed out of the western European experience and the specific instances of transition in the third world social formations with their uneven contradictions. Chatterjee pointed out that the elite/subaltern relation is not an alternative definition to class but its complementary that better explains these uneven developments. Nor is it synonymous with the ruling class and the governed class as this relation does not correspond to the structure of the state power. The elite/subaltern should be viewed as two opposed, dialectical consciousness: The subaltern is at the same time dependent (subordination) and opposed (autonomy) to the elite consciousness. On the basis of this approach, he said, the SS initially concentrated on two aspects of modern historiography: (a) the split between the political domain of the subaltern and the elite and (b) the autonomy of peasant consciousness.

Criticism and self-criticism initiated a new turn in the enquiry of the SS from forms of subaltern autonomy to their process of representation. One methodological shift in their enquiry was the study of the text. However, the agenda of the SS remains the same, i e, oppositional and critical history writing. The subaltern cannot speak for the entire society. The historiography of subaltern, he said, would always remain fragmentary, partial and even incoherent.

This new turn in their enquiry, Chatterjee argued, has enabled the SS to engage in the current political debate on community, caste and the gender question. The SS had tried to show that both the Hindu chauvinists and the secularists are pursuing two different strategies to consolidate the regime of modern state. The caste conflicts are now almost entirely centred on the relative position of different caste groups to the state. While all women are subaltern in a patriarchal society, the SS thinks that the social construction of gender in such a society is made more complex through the intervention of caste, class and communal identities.

In his paper ‘Retailing of the Muslim Conquest of India’, Shahid Amin talked about disjunction between historians’ history and peoples’ construction of the past, i e, memory, in recent times in India. For the historians the real challenge under the situation is not to keep on producing real sturdy secular history and use it against what the people are imagining. His history now should also be a history of memory. Neither should the historians’ response be in terms of the argument that India has been defined by syncretism. Syncretism, Shahid Amin said, is a process and this process has very often been a process of conquest, i e, there is a relation between syncretism and conquest.

Citing the example of the ballads of Gazi Mian of Behraich – nephew of the Mohammad of Gazni who died at 19 while protecting his shepherd subjects – Shahid Amin argued that Gazi Mian was not a pacifist, but a conqueror. Yet his achievement is not in terms of conversion, but in terms of those who are not converted, i e, his followers. Neither side has given up its position in this relationship and that is what is required today in telling history, i e, in terms of difference. For such type of history writing it is necessary, he said, to open a third front in history writing and write a non-sectarian history.

In their ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam: The Hindu in the World’, Gyan Prakash (speaking for their group Vasudha) talked about connection (a) between ideological apparatus (i e, internet) and electronic capitalism and (b) between globalisation of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and globalisation as such. Electronic capitalism, GP said (marked by tremendous compression of time and space in the capitalist system of production) has created a new professional class – termed post-state class system – who can secede from the rest of the society.

It is in this context, the VHP is trying to reconstitute the Indian diaspora – dispersed and oriented in their home-based religious practices – into a cohesive Hindu community. The US official multiculturalisation policy, telecommunication revolution and large presence of Indian immigrants in the US academia have helped the VHP in this pursuit. Through dissemination of their re-coded concept of ethnic identity, communalism, family values (e g, patriarchal control over women), the VHP have been trying to give this new class a sense of identity which transnational capital has been constantly trying to erode. This has enabled VHP to raise millions of dollars in the US for welfare programmes in India with obvious seepage to the coffer of Sangh parivar. With these resources the Sangh parivar can potentially develop a new political agency – the post-state class system – which will not be under the domination of any nation state. The left in India and in the US, GP argued, have failed to comprehend this new role of Hindu nationalism in the new global order and the potentiality of electronic revolution which at once allow the penetration of international capital and create a Hindu who can step into the ‘international civil society’ at ease.

The post-state class system, GP argued in subsequent discussion, refers not to the withering away of the state and class relations. It signifies an effort by the capital to organise the economy without the constraints of a nation state. On the relation between international capital and the nation states, GP argued that the Berton Wood was an attempt to organise global capital through the institution of nation state. Under its current phase, the global capital has created a political situation which does not remain confined to the diktat of nation state. While searching for ethnic identity and roots, hindutva has connected itself to this changing nature of global capital.

In his ‘Religion, Social Space and Identity: Construction of Boundary in Colonial India’, Sanal Mohan (SM) discussed the movement led by Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha and its prophet Yohannan for recasting the social power structure in the late 19th and early 20th century Travancore. SM analysed the movement in terms of a contest over space which has found a balance between materialism and spirituality, rather than in terms of binary opposition between material well-being and spirituality. During the movement the dalit consciousness came to be expressed through reworked religious idioms, traditions, collective memory, social experience, etc. The Sabha reworked the bitter memory of slavery in a manner that gave dalits at once a better understanding of their slave past and also motivated them to break with that past.

The Sabha’s effort to restore dalit identity was, to SM, a process of self-negation, i e, to become what it was not earlier. In this the Sabha’s effort had been to break out of the caste-fold which was the basis of all past communities and to introduce new concepts. But the agenda remained incomplete. The caste affiliation persisted and came back later when the schism appeared in the movement.

Gautam Bhadra opened the discussion with the argument that history writing cannot do without stereotypes. But he asked, what would be the method of stereotyping the dalit language. Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak argued that the construction of dalit consciousness by recalling the slave past (by SM) is the construction of dalit consciousness through separation. Ravi Sinha remarked that in this process of packing and unpacking ‘stereotypes’ one should not forget the person who was packing and unpacking the stereotype, and his reference point. The reaction of SM to these questions has been that he would go for the stereotype to the extent it enables him to dismantle the structure of dominance. He was, however, not sure how an outsider could know in absolute terms the ways and means of the community that he studies.

Sukalpa Bhattacharya (SB) in her paper ‘Women and the Question of Cultural Rights: Two Cases of North-East India’ argued that the women in the north-east are thrice marginalised: as a post-colonial subject, as part of periphery to the (national) centre, and, finally, as women. In the north-eastern states, the state-nation is an imposition on a society now positioned between patriliny and matriliny immediately after their slave past. In such a situation the non-insurgent women of Mizoram and Nagaland are opposing local elites, customs, church and the Indian state indirectly through their welfare programme. In the same vein, Prasenjit Biswas argued in his ‘Debate between Patriliny and Matriliny in Khasi Society’ that the opposition of khasi women organisations to the patriarchal authority has been indirect (through the opposition to the state-nation), inarticulate (not directly counterpoised against patriarchy which is only emergent) and partially conservative (defending the essence of khasi traditional culture).

The concept ‘state-nation’, according to PB, refers to an institution which is imposed from above to which the community below was made to adjust. Mahmood Mamdani informed that the term ‘state-nation’ has frequently appeared in the discourses on state formation in Africa in recent times. In Africa, he said, there has been complete disjunction between the processes of state formation and the social processes. The concept of state-nation in Africa is seen as an agent that enforces a manufactured identity enforced from above.

PB, however, argued that his concept of state-nation is different from MM’s concept. In the north-eastern context the concept inheres the concept of nation from below as presented by them in the UN Forum on Unrepresented Nation. Javed Alam, however, found in this concept ‘nation from below’ an expression of demand for recognition by these little communities as distinct people within a larger multinational situation.

On the question of retrieval of subaltern voices Shahid Amin argued that one cannot retrieve a subaltern text and leave it at that as it does not help us understand the document. One has to inhabit it with the time and space which are different from those of the historians’ to make the text meaningful. The historians should also remember in this connection that the official documents (unlike memory) reflect on the relationship between the state and the people. The way the evidence is made available reflects the way the state has impinged on the life, and livings of the subaltern.

Reacting to comments on her paper, SB said that one does need some stereotypes, some basis of an interaction with the subaltern groups to make an entry into their otherness. “What does one do?” – she asked, when a woman (like her) wants to study the emergence of the Naga woman from an unorganised, rural Naga women. Reacting to this Spivek pointed out that she agrees with the argument about the necessity of stereotypes in dealing with unorganised Naga women. The question, however, is, how does one proceed in a situation where one is not in a position to enter into the space of unorganised Naga women and who have therefore been defined as women without language, history, etc. One of the ways to resolve this question is, she thinks, through the textuality of doing (without, of course, valorising doing over knowing) in that arena with patience and learn the limit of our ignorance which tells us that the other has no language.

PB, instead, advocated the field-linguistic method in which the investigator talks directly to the other in the field. One discussant, Janki, said that the assumption that the so-called native once identified will talk to the investigator in an unmediated form is a rather grand arrogation. It, in effect, locates the investigator at the centre of the narrative and has the potentiality of reconstruction, not retrieval. She said that it might be more useful to construct the whole narrative as relation. Shahid Amin pointed out that even when the researcher knows the language of the speech community he is investigating, there is the possibility that the distance between him (the researcher) and the speech community surfaces precisely when he claims that he is nearer to that speech because of the knowledge of its language. This kind of affirmity (the knowledge of language) is enabling. But he warns that there is something else besides (this enabling) and his writings must have space for this understanding.

Sail Mayaram’s concern in her ‘Canonising Hinduism: the Politics of Conversion’ is to highlight: (a) The VHP’s interpretation of Hinduism, and (b) its recasting of extant tradition among the backward castes Hindu rawat and Muslim merat (both progeny of the community) in the central Aravallis.

With the help of their local accomplice, Chauhan Sabha, the VHP is introducing the philosophy of karma with its emphasis on jati hierarchy, displacing the locally held beliefs. The local shrines, called jhunjhar, which provide space for women participation and are usually organised by lower caste priests, are being replaced by mandirs where urbanised, brahmin priests control ritual practices. The open structured ancestral shrine thaan, which brings the deity nearer to the people, is being replaced by the mandir which distances the deity from the people.

VHP is trying to deny divinity to a certain deity and empowering certain others. The popular cult of Ram Dev, the local dalit god, is being compared with Vishnu ‘avtar’, a Hindu god. But another popular deity, Tejaji has been denigrated as Tejaji could not be related to any Hindu god. The VHP is also trying to redefine the erotic Tantra cult of Hinglaj, the goddess of Nathyogi – which provided a major challenge to the caste and gender divide – as Parvati, the goddess of social propriety.

Commenting on the activities of VHP, Rajesh Mishra said that the cannonisation of Hinduism is a political project. It cannot be contested effectively by individuals opening a third front in history writing, e g, non-sectarian history writings suggested by Shahid Amin earlier. Roop Rekha Verma added that the latest political agenda of VHP is to impose uniform identity on various social/religious groups and commercialise Hinduism.

Ratan Khasnabis argued that a strong wave of communalism is sweeping the subcontinent in recent times. The ideology of class has yielded place to communal ideas. Javed Alam reacted to this by saying that the problems of communalism cannot be understood by counterpoising class against community. In India, the larger castes have collapsed into communities like jadav, kurmi, etc, who do not accept brahmanical categories, hierarchies and ritual discriminations. From out of these internally differentiated communities a new middle class has emerged which is trying to organise these communities in larger political groupings and has challenged the brahminical authorities. The upper caste brahmins, thakurs, etc, in reaction, have stopped thinking about themselves as brahmins, thakurs, etc, and have taken to Hinduism and have arraigned themselves against the struggle for democracy by these newly emergent middle classes. This is the specificity of India at this juncture. Ravi Sinha pointed out in this connection that the social scientists must find out methods to incorporate their study of myths, mysticism, etc, with all other micro level movements which may not always be of the subaltern groups. Only this kind of approach will enable the activists to find strategies to fight communalism on a larger scale.

In her response, Sail Mayaram argued that she found local complicity among merat and rawat in the process of penetration of VHP ideology in their region. However, she said, the people also resisted. Even after ‘parivartan’, the Muslims continued with their practices of burial. When there were attempts to change the kinship structure, people resisted openly resulting in riots. The form of resistance depended on the customs and practices of resistance of the locals. Modernity, she said, entered into the lives of these communities in diverse ways. The idea that the Hindus and Muslims are two distinct categories came during the colonial era and the idea of de-Islamisation came into being at the time of mobilisation in 1947.

Analysing the colonial state, Mahmood Mamdani (MM) argued that it produced two types of identity: civic and ethnic. The civic identity is the identity of citizens and is racially defined. The natives are defined ethnically, excluded from the regime of rights, and follow their own customary laws enforced by customary authority. In the African case these customary rights included the right to use land (though not its ownership), which is very important for the livelihood of the poor.

At independence, the distinction between the citizen and subject turned into citizen and ethnic. The settlers belonged to civic citizenship, but the natives belonged to both. There are two types of settlers: (a) the foreigners, the non-native settlers, and (b) native settlers (also called foreign native), who came from outside that ethnic area. In an ethnic sense, the settlers are divided into indigenous and non-indigenous. It is in this demand for privileging the indigenous over the non-indigenous (often the majority if one adds settlers and native settlers) that the ethnic conflict in Africa is structurally embedded.

In the context of Rwanda he said that the Hutu (usually poor) and the Tutsee (usually well off) are the only two conflicting groups who had a history of intermarriage and had patriarchal system of lineage before the colonial period. This ensured ethnic mobility in their identity. During the colonial period these identities were written into law which forbade these intermarriages and created a Hutu counter-elite who could now organise the majority Hutu (85 per cent of the population) against Tutsee (15 per cent of the total). On the other hand, the Tutsees, were dispriviledged in the civic sphere in relation to the whites. So, while the Hutus are demanding Tutsees overthrowal, the latter were calling for independence – overthrow of the white. Both the struggles have a democratic component, and yet, MM says, neither can be accepted uncritically.

The 1955 revolution brought Hutu counter- elite to power. They wanted to cleanse every institution of the Tutsees. The year 1972 brought to power another regime who proclaimed cultural revolution over and above social revolution. After the 1994 genocide the Tutsee leadership came to power, which was seeking justice above all. So we have a situation where the Tutsee, the minority, fear democracy. To them, it is a tool of further genocide. On the other, the Hutu, the majority, is afraid of justice which, to them, is a ruse for the minority to retain power over them.

In his ‘Can a Muslim Be an Indian’ Gyan Pandey (GP) said that we must argue for the democratic potential of the nation state and not for nationalism that has demanded cultural homogeneity of communities. Nation, he says, is at the same time regional, religious, occupational, etc, with many different identifications. In the discourses on the process of nation-building during and after partition, GP argues, the Muslims have been categorised as: (a) fundamentalist Muslims and (b) Muslim nationalists politically associated with the national movement. These discourses never bothered about the political affiliation of Hindus in general. The politically conscious among them were divided into nationalists of right wing variety and secular nationalists.

In these discourses the minorities were called minorities even in places where they are majority, e g, in undivided Bengal or Punjab. The Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, etc, were considered Indians as the birthplace of their religion (like Hindus) was India. Only the Muslims were foreigners who conquered India, consistently challenged the Indian national movement for political and other rights and finally actualised their rights in the form of Pakistan.

In all these discourses the Hindus appeared as the invisible ‘hum’ (us). The other invisibility in these discourses were the politics of nationhood itself. That it is a political project, involving such issues as federalisation, centralisation, etc, cannot be acknowledged as for hindutva the concept of nationhood in India, as elsewhere, is always a pure, natural category, not political. That invisibility needs to be questioned. No nation, GP says, exists naturally; no nation can come into existence without its politics being worked out, negotiated and fought for.

In her presentation, U Alpagham said that the subaltern studies works have evoked mixed reaction. Political economists, among others, have argued that their categories and methods are more rigorously defined than those of subaltern studies. But there are subaltern studies scholars like Partha Chatterjee who wanted to integrate mode of production studies with those of the culture and society.

Commitment to economic and social development, among the social scientists in India, she said, have resulted in the entrenchment of the empirical positivist approach to social sciences research. The social scientists in this country have not shown much inclination to the study of power and change. To the mindset of social scientists these words evoke the meanings of attempt to divert, or dislodge the older, agreed upon agenda and foster change. Once the problematic of power and change is put at the centre of social science research and is given the social science perspective, the whole social science research would lead to alternative paradigm.

Women studies in India, on the other hand, she thought, kept power and change in focus of their project. Women studies groups have remained rooted in political and social movement, and have constantly expanded their political space. To this extent, she thinks, the feminist movement in India has reached a higher stage of development than the mainstream social science research as well as subaltern studies works.

In his final presentation, Javeed Alam argued that in India there were certain communities who were unfree. At this particular juncture, he said, it is these communities who are fighting the greatest battle for bourgeois democracy. The colonial construction of caste, he said, has to a large extent been overcome by these communities. His concern is to find out the conditions that stand in the way of forming a radical movement. In the context of globalisation his other related concern is to find the sites available to us to fight the capital. His assertion was that the nationalist platform against imperialism is one such possible site where one can fight globalisation as well as defend the rights of citizens which globalisation is attacking. The Indian state, which is, after all, the state of the ruling class, will not create this platform. It can be raised only through the united struggles of peasants, workers and the toiling people.

The middle class in India, he said, is for globalisation and have become its spokesman. Secondly, he said, the contradiction between regional capital and pan-Indian capital, so distinct in the 1960s and 1970s, is no longer there. Regional capital now is as eager as pan-Indian capital to collaborate with global capital. There is also a disjunction between economics and politics in India at this moment. Formations like OBCs, etc, he said, have been allowed by the ruling classes (at the centre) to function at the regional level and carry their political projects, social engineering, etc, on the condition that they (these formations) do not interfere with the economic policies of the ruling class at the centre. The understanding of this disjunction between economics and politics is very crucial in putting up a fight against globalisation.

In her counterpoint, Gayatri Spivek pointed out that new definitions of peoples’ movements are coming up in south Asia and south-east Asia – non-governmental organisation is a discription given by the other side, it is not a definition. The essence of a definition of these peoples’ movements would be whether their work is substantially truncated or not when foreign help is stopped. These nationalist movements (the peoples’ movements) were not part of the old nationalist movement. To the extent that there is a national movement, we have to think of the nation. But that national movement is dissolved when the networks – the third world network, women network, etc – combine and that becomes the front for struggle. To this extent, she said, there has been displacement of nationalism in the global struggle.