Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts?

Author(s): Dipesh Chakrabarty Reviewed work(s): Source: Representations, No. 37, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories (Winter, 1992), pp. 1-26 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928652 . Accessed: 31/07/2012 17:18
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DIPESH

CHAKRABARTY

Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts?
Pushthought toextremes. -Louis Althusser

I
IT HAS RECENTLY

time since colonizathat it demonstrates, Subaltern Studies "perhaps for the first tion,"that "Indians are showingsustained signs of reappropriatingthe capacity As a historianwho is the disciplineof history]."' to representthemselves[within I find the Studies a member of the Subaltern collective, congratulationcontained The in this remark gratifying but premature. purpose of thisarticleis to probLet us put lematize the idea of "Indians" "representingthemselvesin history." inherentin a transnational aside forthe momentthe messyproblemsof identity blur the where passportsand commitments Studies, enterprisesuch as Subaltern in a manner thatsome would regard as characteristically of ethnicity distinctions postmodern.I have a more perversepropositionto argue. It is thatinsofaras the as a discourse produced at the academic discourse of history-that is, "history" siteof theuniversity-isconcerned,"Europe" remainsthesovereign, institutional theoreticalsubjectof all histories, includingthe ones we call "Indian," "Chinese," "Kenyan,"and so on. There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variationson a masternarrativethatcould be called "the history itselfis in a positionof subalternity; of Europe." In this sense, "Indian" history one can onlyarticulatesubalternsubjectpositionsin the name of thishistory. While the restof thisarticlewillelaborate on thisproposition,let me enter a fewqualifications."Europe" and "India" are treatedhere as hyperrealtermsin that they refer to certain figuresof imaginationwhose geographical referents of theimaginary As figures remainsomewhatindeterminate.2 theyare, of course, I as for the moment shall treat them but thoughtheywere subjectto contestation, of dominationand subgiven,reifiedcategories,opposites paired in a structure themthus I leave myself ordination.I realize thatin treating open to the charge of nativism,nationalism,or worse, the sin of sins, nostalgia. Liberal-minded scholarswould immediately protestthatany idea of a homogeneous,uncontested
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BEEN SAID in praise of the postcolonial project of

37 * Winter1992

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OF THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIF9RNIA

"Europe" dissolves under analysis.True, butjust as the phenomenon of orientalismdoes not disappear simplybecause some of us have now attaineda critical a certainversionof "Europe," reifiedand celebrated in awareness of it,similarly the phenomenal world of everydayrelationshipsof power as the scene of the birthof the modern,continuesto dominatethediscourseof history. Analysisdoes not make it go away. in historical becomes That Europe worksas a silentreferent knowledgeitself obvious in a highlyordinaryway.There are at least two everydaysymptomsof third-world of non-Western, histories.Third-world historians the subalternity feel a need to referto worksin European history;historiansof Europe do not feel any need to reciprocate.Whetherit is an Edward Thompson, a Le Roy Ladurie, a George Duby,a Carlo Ginzberg,a Lawrence Stone,a RobertDarnton,or a Natalie Davis-to take but a few names at random from our contemporary are alwaysat least world-the "greats"and themodels of thehistorian's enterprise in work relative their culturally "European." "They" produce ignorance of nonthis not seem to affect the of and does Westernhistories, quality theirwork.This an equality is a gesture,however,that"we" cannot return.We cannoteven afford of ignorance at thislevel withouttakingthe riskof appearing "oldor symmetry fashioned"or "outdated." The problem, I may add in parenthesis,is not particularto historians.An but nevertheless blatantexample of this"inequality of ignorance" unselfconscious in literary sentenceon Salman Rushdie from studies,forexample, is thefollowing a recent texton postmodernism:"Though Saleem Sinai [of Midnight's Children] forboth writing and writing fiction narratesin English ... his intertexts history and literature are doubled: theyare, on theone hand, fromIndian legends,films, One Hundred and, on the other,fromthe West-The Tin Drum,Tristram Shandy, on."3 It is to note how this and so sentence teases out Years Solitude, interesting of The are from "the West." author is no references that under those only obligation and specificity the "Indian" allusions here to be able to name withany authority "doubled." This ignorance, shared and that make Rushdie's intertexuality unstated,is part of the assumed compact thatmakes it "easy" to include Rushdie on postcolonialism. in English departmentofferings This problem of asymmetric ignorance is not simplya matterof "cultural cringe" (to let myAustralianselfspeak) on our part or of culturalarrogance on the part of the European historian.These problems exist but can be relatively of awayfromthe achievements easilyaddressed. Nor do I mean to take anything bear richtestimony to the insights we the historiansI mentioned.Our footnotes The dominance of "Europe" have derived fromtheirknowledgeand creativity. conas the subject of all historiesis a part of a much more profound theoretical dition under which historicalknowledge is produced in the third world. This
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condition ordinarilyexpresses itselfin a paradoxical manner. It is this paradox and it of our subalternity, that I shall describe as the second everydaysymptom refersto the verynature of social science pronouncementsthemselves. For generationsnow,philosophersand thinkers shaping the nature of social of humanity. As we well science have produced theoriesembracingthe entirety in been and have sometimes these statements absolute, know, produced relative, culignorance of the majorityof humankind-i.e., those livingin non-Western of European tures. This in itselfis not paradoxical, for the more self-conscious tojustify thisstance.The everyday philosophershave alwayssoughttheoretically find in spiteof their science is that we these of third-world social theories, paradox in useful of inherent ignorance "us," eminently understandingour societies. What allowed the modern European sages to develop such clairvoyancewith Whycannotwe, once ignorant? regard to societiesof whichtheywere empirically the return gaze? again, of philosopherswho have There is an answer to thisquestion in the writings an entelechyof universalreason, if we regard such read into European history of social science. Only "Europe," the arguthe self-consciousness as philosophy ment would appear to be, is theoretically (i.e., at the level of the fundamentalcathistorical that thinking)knowable; all other historiesare matters egories shape of empirical research that fleshes out a theoreticalskeleton which is substantially "Europe." There is one version of this argument in Edmund Husserl's Vienna lecture of 1935, where he proposed that the fundamentaldifference Indian and Chinese) and between "oriental philosophies" (more specifically, speaking: philosophy") "Greek-European science" (or as he added, "universally was the capacity of the latterto produce "absolute theoreticalinsights," that is former a while the retained and "theoria" science), (universal "practical-universal," character.This "practical-universal" hence "mythical-religious," philosophywas in a to world "naive" and directed the manner,whilethe world "straightforward" makingpossible a praxis "whose aim is presented itselfas a "thematic"to theoria, reason."4 to elevate mankind throughuniversalscientific A rather similar epistemologicalproposition underlies Marx's use of categories like "bourgeois" and "prebourgeois" or "capital" and "precapital." The a relationshipthatis both chronologicaland theoretical. prefixprehere signifies Marx argues in the Grundrisse The coming of the bourgeois or capitalistsociety, timeto a history thatcan be apprehended and elsewhere,gives rise for the first and universal a "capital." Historybecomes, for category, through philosophical knowable.All past historiesare now to be known (thethe first time,theoretically thatis in termsof their from the that is) vantage pointof thiscategory, oretically, fromit. Things reveal theircategoricalessence onlywhen theyreach differences theirfullest development,or as Marx put itin thatfamousaphorismof theGrund"Human anatomycontainsthekeyto theanatomyof theape."5The category risse: "capital,"as I have discussed elsewhere,containswithinitselfthe legal subjectof WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts? 3

Not surprisingly, Marx said in thatveryHegelian first thought.6 Enlightenment chapter of Capital,vol. 1, that the secret of "capital,"the category,"cannot be of a popular deciphered untilthenotionof human equalityhas acquired thefixity To Marx's continue with words: prejudice."7 because of their Even the most abstract despitetheirvalidity-precisely categories, . . . themselves ... a product all epochs,are nevertheless of historical abstractness-for is and the the most most historic relations. developed complex society organiBourgeois which itsrelations, thecomprehension ofits ofproduction. The categories zation express intothestructure and therelations also allowinsights of production of structure, thereby and elements itbuilt outofwhoseruins whose all thevanished socialformations itself up, remnants are carried still it,whosemerenuanceshave alongwithin unconquered partly within of higher it,etc.... The intimations developedexplicit significance development animalspecies... canbe understood after thehigher develonly amongthesubordinate thus known. the to the is The ancient.8 economy bourgeois supplies key opment already For "capital" or "bourgeois,"I submit,read "Europe." II Neither Marx nor Husserl spoke-not at least in the words quoted we should also recallhere thatMarx's above-in a historicist spirit.In parenthesis, vision of emancipation entailed a journey beyond the rule of capital, in fact holds so sacred. The maxim beyond the notionofjuridicalequalitythatliberalism "From each according to his abilityto each according to his need" runs quite contraryto the principle of "Equal pay for equal work,"and this is why Marx remains-the Berlin Wall notwithstanding (or not standing!)-a relevant and and thuscentralto any postfundamentalcriticof both capitalismand liberalism of Yet colonial, postmodernproject writing history. Marx's methodological/episnot have resistedhistoricist alwayssuccessfully temologicalstatements readings. in these statements There has alwaysremained enough ambiguity to make possible the emergence of "Marxist" historicalnarratives.These narrativesturn Most modern third-world around the theme of "historicaltransition." histories withinproblematicsposed by thistransition of are written which the narrative, overriding(if often implicit)themes are those of development,modernization, capitalism. This tendencycan be located in our own workin theSubaltern Studies project. on book with the Sumit Sarkar's working-class historystruggles problem.9 My (another colleague in the SubalternStudiesproject) Modern India, justifiably regarded as one of the best textbookson Indian historywrittenprimarilyfor sentences: Indian universities, opens withthe following or so that lie between thefoundation The sixty of theIndianNational in years Congress inAugust 1947witnessed ofindependence 1885and theachievement the perhaps greatest A transition, inourcountry's inmany which transition remains however, longhistory. ways 4
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itseemsmost this central that convenient and itis with ambiguity incomplete, grievously tobeginour survey.'0 was it thatremained "grievously What kind of a transition incomplete"?Sarkar of therehavingbeen severalbynamingthree: hintsat the possibility unfulofthenational remained arousedin thecourse struggle oftheaspirations So many intohisowninRam-rajya dreamof thepeasant filled-theGandhian [theruleof coming idealsofsocialrevolution. and theidealgod-king thelegendary Ram],as muchas theleft Indiaand Pakistan wasrepeatedly to ofindependent Andas thehistory (andBangladesh) and successful ofa complete transformation eventheproblems reveal, capitalist bourgeois ofpower of 1947.(4) solvedbythetransfer werenotfully development and just kingdom,nor the Left'sideal Neitherthe peasant's dream of a mythical nor a "completebourgeoistransformation"-it is within of a social[ist]revolution, these three absences, these "grievously incomplete"scenariosthatSarkar locates the storyof modern India. to It is also witha similarreferenceto "absences"-the "failure"of a history an of the instance with its an "lazynative," destiny(once again appointment keep Studies: shall we say?)-that we announced our projectof Subaltern classto lead itintoa as wellas of theworking added] of thebourgeoisie [emphasis quacy of the classic revolution and a bourgeois-democratic over colonialism decisivevictory
failure study ofthis nineteenth-century type... or [of the] "new democracy"[type]-it is the 1 India. the central which constitutes ofcolonial ofthe historiography problematic toitsown,a failuredue to the inadetocome It is the studyof thishistoric ofthenation failure

in termsof a lack,an absence, or an incomThe tendencyto read Indian history into that translates "inadequacy"is obviousin theseexcerpts.As a trope, pleteness is an ancient it one, going back to the hoarybeginningsof colonial rule however, of "Indian" pasts British in India. The conquered and representedthe diversity through a homogenizing narrativeof transitionfrom a "medieval" period to The termshave changed withtime.The "medieval"was once called "modernity." has been a later the "modern,""therule of law.""Feudal/capitalist" and "despotic" variant. of India, thistransition narformulatedin colonial histories When itwas first for and violence rativewas an unashamed celebrationof the imperialist's capacity Alexander Dow's the one To available, many example among give only conquest. first published in threevolumesbetween 1770 and 1772, was History ofHindostan, when of theeighteenth dedicated to the kingwitha candor characteristic century one did not need a Michel Foucault to uncoverthe connectionbetweenviolence and knowledge: "The success of Your Majesty'sarms,"said Dow, "has laid open the East to the researches of the curious."'2 Underscoring this connection Dow added: betweenviolence and modernity, WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts? 5

some toextend ofBengaland they havebecometheconquerors nation The British ought and itis so considered It is an absolute tenure. (1:cxxxviii) bytheworld. conquest,
part of their fundamentaljurisprudence to secure theirconquest.... The sword is our

This "fundamentaljurisprudence" was the "rule of law" thatcontrasted,in witha past rule thatwas "arbitrary" and "despotic."In a further Dow's narrative, of mere gloss Dow explained that "despotism"did not referto a "government to knowthatthatwas not trueof caprice and whim,"forhe knewenough history India. Despotism was the opposite of Englishconstitutional itwas a government; the and the executive where "the power [were] vested legislative, judicial system of unfreedom. the in the prince."This was the past With establishment of British open to power,the Indian was to be made a legal subject,ruled bya government the pressures of private property("the foundation of public prosperity," said and a where "the and distributers Dow) supervised by judiciary public opinion, ofjustice ought to be independent of everything but law [as] otherwise theofficer [thejudge] becomes a tool of oppression in the hands of despotism" (l:xcv, cl, cxl-cxli). and twentieth In the nineteenth centuries, generationsof eliteIndian nationnarrative within thistransition as found their alists subjectpositions, nationalists, that, at various times and depending on one's ideology,hung the tapestryof between the two poles of the homologous sets of oppositions, "Indian history" Withinthisnarrative medieval/modern, feudal/capitalist. despotic/constitutional, the and nationalist shared betweenimperialist imaginations, "Indian" was always a figureof lack. There was always,in otherwords,room in thisstoryforcharacters who embodied, on behalf of the native, the theme of "inadequacy" or "failure."Dow's recommendationof a "rule of law" for Bengal/India came with the paradoxical assurance (to the British)thattherewas no danger of such a rule in the natives"a spiritof freedom": "infusing" soil of Bengalfree,is beyondthe powerof political of the fertile To makethe natives their thevery of their .... Theirreligion, institutions, manners, disposition arrangement To givethemproperty wouldonlybind themforpassiveobedience. form theirminds, and makethemour subjects; or if theBritish tiesto our interests, themwithstronger thename-more ourslaves. nation ( :cxl-cxli) prefers We do not need to be reminded that thiswould remain the cornerstoneof imperial ideology for many years to come-subjecthood but not citizenship,as the native was never adequate to the latter-and would eventuallybecome a This was of course wherenationalists For differed. strandof liberaltheory itself.l3 Rammohun Roy as for Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay,two of India's most of the nineteenthcentury, Britishrule was a prominentnationalistintellectuals in Indians had to of that undergo order to prepare tutelage necessary period as theend of all history: citizenthe British denied but extolled for what precisely
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ship and the nationstate.Years later,in 1951, an "unknown"Indian who successdedicated the storyof his lifethus: fullysold his "obscurity" ofthe To thememory in British Empire India on us Which conferred subjecthood Butwithheld citizenship; To which yet outthechallenge ofus threw Everyone Sum" "Civis Britanicus Because Allthat wasgoodand living us Within Wasmade,shaped,and quickened Rule.'4 BythesameBritish as ParthaChatterjeehas shown,itwas the versionsof thisnarrative, In nationalist the subaltern and the classes,who were givento bear the cross workers, peasants to this of "inadequacy,"for,according version,it was theywho needed to be educated out of their ignorance, parochialism,or, depending on your preference, refersto false consciousness.'5Even today the Anglo-Indian word communalism those who allegedlyfailto measure up to the "secular"ideals of citizenship. and discourse of That Britishrule put in place the practices,institutions, bourgeois individualismin the Indian soil is undeniable. Earlyexpressions-that is, before the beginningsof nationalism-of this desire to be a "legal subject" make it clear thatto Indians in the 1830s and 1840s to be a "modern individual" a magazine in colonial Calcutta, was to become a "European." TheLiterary Gleaner, in ran the followingpoem in 1842, written English bya Bengali schoolboyeighteen yearsof age. The poem apparentlywas inspiredbythe sightof ships leaving the coast of Bengal "forthe gloriousshores of England": Oftlikea sad birdI sigh mineownlanditbe; To leavethis land,though and cloudless Itsgreenrobedmeads,-gayflowers sky charms forme. havebutfew fair, Thoughpassing and free morebright ofclimes ForI havedreamed dwells and heaven-born Wherevirtue liberty theeye Makeseventhelowest happy;-where notto see manbendtheknee Dothsicken where science interest:-climes To sordid thrives, herguerdon And genius dothreceive meet; Wheremanin hisall histruest lives, glory sweet: Andnature's faceis exquisitely I heavetheimpatient climes Forthosefair sigh, letmedie.'6 Thereletme liveand there WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts? 7

In its echoes of Milton and seventeenth-century English radicalism, this is Madhusudan Michael of colonial a Dutt, the young pastiche.17 obviously piece of being "Eurothe realized impossibility Bengali author of thispoem, eventually to become one of our finest poets. Later pean" and returnedto Bengali literature Indian nationalists,however,abandoned such abject desire to be "Europeans" themselves.Nationalistthoughtwas premised preciselyon the assumed universalityof the project of becoming individuals,on the assumptionthat"individual and abstract"equality"were universalsthatcould findhome anywherein rights" the world, that one could be both an "Indian" and a "citizen"at the same time. of thisproject. We shall soon explore some of the contradictions of individualismbecame vismodern rituals and private Many of the public One sees this,forinstance,in the sudden ible in India in the nineteenthcentury. basic four of the in this genres thathelp express the modern period flourishing and history.18 the autobiography, self: the novel,the biography, Along withthese a came modern industry, medicine, quasibourgeois (thoughcolonial) technology, legal systemsupported by a statethatnationalismwas to take over and make its narrativethat I have been discussingunderwrote,and was own. The transition To thinkthis narrativewas to think in turn underpinned by,these institutions. and to thinkthe modern state,19 which sat the of the at institutions these apex whose theoreticalsubject was modern or the nation state was to thinka history to the Indian national1909. as this as realized Gandhi Referring early Europe. modern medicine,and bourgeoislaw,he cannily ists'demands formore railways, remarkedin his book Hind Swarajthatthiswas to "make India English"or, as he This "Europe," as Michael theEnglishman."20 put it,to have "Englishrule without and naive poetryshows,was of course nothingbut Madhusudan Dutt's youthful a piece of fictiontold to the colonized by the colonizer in the very process of Gandhi's critiqueof this"Europe" is comprocolonial domination.21 fabricating his text. and I do not intendto fetishize his mised on manypointsby nationalism, But I findhis gesture useful in developing the problematicof nonmetropolitan histories.

III I shall now returnto the themesof "failure," "lack,"and "inadequacy" As in that so ubiquitouslycharacterizethe speaking subject of "Indian" history. in a critical first the the practiceof the insurgentpeasants of colonial India, step Let us begin fromwhere the tranmustarise froma gestureof inversion.22 effort where this narrative sitionnarrativeends and read "plenitude" and "creativity" has made us read "lack"and "inadequacy." Indians today are all "citizens." According to the fable of theirconstitution,

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liberaldefinition of citizenship.If embraces almosta classically The constitution the modern stateand the modern individual,the citizen,are but the two inseparable sides of the same phenomenon, as William Connolly argues in Political is in sightfor us in it would appear thatthe end of history and Modernity, Theory life is lived in India.23This modern individual,however,whose political/public is also supposed to have an interiorized "private"selfthatpours out citizenship, in diaries,letters, autobiographies,novels,and, of course, in whatwe incessantly say to our analysts.The bourgeois individualis not born untilone discoversthe pleasures of privacy.But this is a veryspecial kind of "private"-it is, in fact,a deferred"public,"forthisbourgeois private,as JurgenHabermas has reminded us, is "alwaysalready orientedto an audience [Publikum]."24 of citizenIndian public life may mimicon paper the bourgeois legal fiction in as a farce what about the fiction is India-but usually performed ship-the who has social and its tried to write "French" history? Anyone bourgeois private difficult the taskis.25 It withIndian materialwould know how impossibly history is not that the formof the bourgeois privatedid not come withEuropean rule. Indian novels,diaThere have been, since the middle of the nineteenth century, seldom but and ries, letters, they yield picturesof an endlessly autobiographies, interiorizedsubject. Our autobiographies are remarkably"public" (with conof public life thatare not necessarilymodern) when written structions by men, In any when written women.26 and theytell the storyof the extended family by in are for absence. The the confessional mode notable their case, autobiographies Nirad on of 963 that Chaudhuri spends describing pages) single paragraph (out the experience of his wedding nightin the second volume of his celebrated and autobiographyis as good an example as any other and is worth prize-winning at some quoting length. I should explain that this was an arranged marriage and Chaudhuri was anxious lest his wifeshould not appreciate (Bengal, 1932), his newly acquired but unaffordablyexpensive hobby of buying records of Westernclassicalmusic.Our reading of Chaudhuri is handicapped in partbyour of his prose-there may have been at lack of knowledge of the intertextuality revulsionagainstrevealing"too much." an imbibed for work, instance, puritanical of memory, forit is Yet the passage remainsa tellingexercisein the construction about what Chaudhuri "remembers"and "forgets"of his "first night'sexperiwithexpressionslike "I do not remember"or "I ence." He screens offintimacy do not know how" (not to mentiontheveryFreudian "makinga clean breastof"), veil is no doubt a part of the selfthatspeaks: and thisself-constructed as wife a girl ofmeeting whowasa complete I wasterribly at theprospect stranger uneasy in ... and left before me I had nothing to say. to me,and whenshewasbrought standing and sat the and she came side on I sawonlya very smile on her face, bymy timidly shy us to lie down I know how after that both of drifted to the bed. do not of the pillows, edge "Of course,fully dressed.We Hindus ... adds in a footnote: side byside. [Chaudhuri

WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts?

inand everything nude-to be modest, clad and fully bothextremes-fully consider hiswife tobe an allumeuse."] Then the manwants No decent immodest. as grossly betwelen felt itand said:"Youare so thin. She tookup one ofmyarms, wereexchanged. first words thatbeyond I shalltakegood careof you."I did notthank her,and I do notremember aboutEuropeanmusichad The horrible touched. thewordsI evenfelt suspense noting of itat once and lookthe in mymind, and I decidedto makea cleanbreast reawakened as were on suchterms and romance in the face if was called it for, sacrifice, begin straight to any European after a while:"Have you listened to me. I asked her timidly offered I tookanother time chanceand this music?" She shookherheadtosay"No."Nonetheless, She noddedand signified asked:"Haveyouheardthenameofa mancalledBeethoven?" satisfied. So I askedyetagain:"Can youspellthe butnotwholly "Yes."I was reassured, ... and [we] name?"She said slowly: "B, E, E, T, H, 0, V,E, N." I felt very encouraged dozed off.27 The desire to be "modern"screamsout of everysentencein the twovolumes of Chaudhuri's autobiography.His legendaryname now stands for the cultural of Indo-Britishencounter.Yet in the 1500-odd pages thathe has written history of Chaudhuin English about his life,thisis the onlypassage where the narrative to make room for circlesis interrupted in public lifeand literary ri'sparticipation somethingapproaching the intimate.How do we read thistext,thisself-making of an Indian male who was second to no one in his ardor forthe public lifeof the citizen, yet who seldom, if ever, reproduced in writingthe other side of the modern citizen,theinteriorized reachingout foran audiprivateselfunceasingly ence? Public withoutprivate? Yet another instance of the "incompleteness"of in India? bourgeois transformation narrativethatin These questions are themselvespromptedby the transition I do not wish to turn situatesthe modern individual at the veryend of history. it may not have. confer on Chaudhuri's autobiography a representativeness and scholars have just as I have already said, are different, Women's writings, But ifone result in Indian of history. begun to explore theworld autobiographies in India was to introducethe modern stateand theidea of European imperialism of the nation withtheirattendantdiscourse of "citizenship," which,by the very rule of the "the idea of "thecitizen's law"),splits (i.e., figureof the modern rights" self the of the and into individual (as young Marx once "private"parts "public" these themeshave existed-in contesQuestion), Jewish pointed out in his On the tation,alliance, and miscegenation-with other narrativesof the self and comof bind as the ultimateconstruction munitythat do not look to the state/citizen It is that but further. not be as such will This mypoint goes disputed, sociality.28 while documentable in themof self and community, these other constructions or teleoloselves,will never enjoy the privilegeof providingthe metanarratives narrative without at least an be a cannot that there implicit gies (assuming oftenthemteleology)of our histories.This is so partlybecause these narratives selvesbespeak an antihistorical consciousness;thatis,theyentailsubjectpositions

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of memorythat challenge and undermine the subject that and configurations in of history. name the "History"is preciselythe site where the struggle speaks goes on to appropriate, on behalf of the modern (my hyperrealEurope), these othercollocationsof memory. I willnow discussa fragment of thiscontested thesepropositions, To illustrate modern were embroiled and the individual in which the modern private history in colonial India.29 IV What I presenthere are the outlines,so to speak, of a chapter in the in colonial Bengal. The material-in the main of history bourgeois domesticity textsproduced in Bengali between 1850 and 1920 forteachingwomen thatvery Victoriansubject,"domesticscience"-relates to the Bengali Hindu middle class, into Indian life the or "respectablepeople." Britishrule instituted the bhadralok ideational divisionon whichmodern politicalstructures trichotomous rest,e.g., It was therefore not and the civil the state, surprising society, (bourgeois) family. that ideas relating to bourgeois domesticity, privacy,and individualityshould come to India via Britishrule. What I want to highlight here, however,through are certain cultural operations by which the the example of the bhadralok, "Indians" challenged and modifiedthesereceivedideas in such a wayas to put in question two fundamental tenets underlying the idea of "modernity"-the nuclear familybased on companionate marriageand the secular,historicalconof time. struction Ghulam Murshid,and other scholars have shown, As Meredith Borthwick, the eighteenth-century European idea of "civilization"culminated, in early India, in a full-blown imperialistcritique of Indian/Hindu nineteenth-century domestic life,which was now held to be inferiorto what became mid-Victorian The "condition of women" question in ideals of bourgeois domesticity.30 of was that critique, as were the ideas of the India part nineteenth-century In passages remarkable and "rights." "modern"individual,"freedom," "equality," and orientalism, for theircombinationof egalitarianism James Mill's TheHistory of the and a the thematic British India (1817) joined together family/nation of of "freedom": teleology in themanners of remarkable circumstances is one of themost of women The condition as in a nations thewomen of uncultivated nations.... The history uniformly represents advances.... As fromwhichtheyslowly stateof abjectslavery, emergeas civilisation . the condition of the weaker sex is gradually its . refines upon enjoyments society and terms with the the associate on till men, occupy placeofvolunequal improved, they A state and humiliating thanthat of dependence morestrict and useful coadjutors. tary be easily conceived.31 is ordained fortheweaker sexamongtheHinduscannot which

WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts?

11

As is well known,the Indian middle classes generallyfeltanswerable to this onward a movementdeveloped in charge. From the early nineteenth-century "women's conditions"and to give them to reform other (and regions) Bengal formaleducation. Much of thisdiscourse on women'seducation was emancipaand "awakening," tionistin that it spoke the language of "freedom,""equality," and was stronglyinfluencedby Ruskinian ideals and idealization of bourgeois as part of the historyof the modern If one looks on this history domesticity.32 on featureemerges. It is thatin thisliterature individual in India, an interesting debated much more women'seducation certainterms,afterall, were vigorously than others.There was, forexample, a degree of consensus over the desirability of a stateof moderof domestic"discipline"and "hygiene"as practicesreflective in the rhetoricof the term another word but the important yet freedom, nity, It was a a consensus. of such social as the modern, hardly ever acted register passionatelydisputed word, and we would be wrongto assume thatthe passions battleof the sexes. The word was assimia simple and straightforward reflected culturalboundaries thatsupposedlysepneed to construct lated to the nationalist The dispute over thisword was thus from the "Indian." arated the "European" centralto the discursivestrategiesthroughwhicha subject positionwas created enabling the "Indian" to speak. It is this subject position that I want to discuss here in some detail. What the Bengali literatureon women's education played out was a battle of a cultural norm of the patriarchal,patribetween a nationalistconstruction local, patrilineal,extended familyand the ideal of the patriarchal,bourgeois disnuclear familythat was implicitin the European/imperialist/universalist The course on the "freedoms"of individualism,citizenship,and civil society.33 in shaping nationalist themesof "discipline"and "order" were critical imaginings of aestheticsand power."Discipline"was seen as the keyto the power of the colothe self. nial (i.e., modern) state,but itrequired certainproceduresforredefining itwas argued, because theywere disciplined,orderly, The Britishwere powerful, and punctual in every detail of their lives, and this was made possible by the education of "their"women who broughtthe virtuesof disciplineinto the home. now fared badly in nationalist The "Indian" home, a colonial construct, writings To quote a Bengali texton women'seducation from1877: on modern domesticity. household The houseof anycivilised objectis Europeanis liketheabode of gods.Every foul.... It seemsuncleanor smells clean,setin itsproperplaceand decorated; nothing had become is as if[thegoddess srinkhal, "order, "chains"] of] order[srinkhala, discipline"; table of theroomwouldbe a covered manifest to pleasethe[human] eye.In themiddle on it,whilearounditwouldbe [a few]chairs with a bouquetof flowers arranged nicely and youwouldfeelas a housein ourcountry clean.Butenter [with] sparkling everything atone forall thesinsof to make there ifyou had been transported you byyourdestiny thesenses... dustin theair,a growing heap of torturing yourlife.[A massof] cowdung and putting themess intotheground around... a little ashes,flies boyurinating buzzing that seemsto be runbackintohismouth.... The wholeplaceis dominated bya stench
12 REPRESENTATIONS

thehousehold are so unclean that objects they ningfree .... Thereis no orderanywhere, evoke disgust.34 only of the colonial subject,the double movementof recognition This self-division by whichitboth knowsits"present"as the siteof disorderand yetmovesaway from thisspace in desiringa disciplinethatcan onlyexistin an imaginedbut "historical" future,is a rehearsal,in the contextof the discussionof the bourgeois domestic in colonial India, of the transition narrativewe have encountered before. A historical constructionof temporality(medieval/modern, separated by historical time),in other words,is preciselythe axis along whichthe colonial subject splits this splitis what is history;writing is peritself.Or to put it differently, history over and over this split forming again. The desire fororder and disciplinein the domesticsphere thus maybe seen as having been a correlate of the nationalist,modernizingdesire for a similar disciplinein the public sphere, thatis fora rule of law enforcedbythe state.It is but the connection beyond the scope of thispaper to pursue thispoint further, in what betweenpersonal disciplineand disciplinein publiclifewas to revealitself wroteabout domestichygieneand public health.The connection the nationalists and itis whattheIndian modernshared withtheEurois recognizably modernist, I to attend to, however,are the differences between What want modern.35 pean I the of is where turn to other the the two. And this important aspect European modern, the rhetoricof "freedom"and "equality." The argumentabout "freedom"-in the textsunder discussion-was waged around the question of the Victorianideals of the companionate marriage,that is, over the question as to whetheror not the wifeshould also be a friendto the husband. Nothing threatenedthe ideal of the Bengali/Indian extended family within more thanthis thatstructure) (or the exalted positionof the mother-in-law thatthe wifewas also to be a idea, wrapped up in notionsof bourgeois privacy, thatthewoman was now to be a modern individual. friendor,to put itdifferently, I mustmentionhere thatthe modernindividual,who assertshis/her individuality almost always appears in nineover the claims of thejoint or extended family, teenth-and early twentieth-century Bengali literatureas an embattled figure, and essaysthat oftenthe subjectof ridiculeand scornin the same Bengali fiction in personal otherwiseextolled the virtuesof disciplineand scientific rationality and public lives.This ironyhad manyexpressions.The mostwell-known Bengali is fictional characterwho representsthismoral censure of modern individuality ekadashi Nimchand Datta in Dinabandhu Mitra'splaySadhabar (1866). Nimchand, who is English-educated,quotes Shakespeare, Milton,or Locke at the slightest opportunityand uses this education arrogantlyto ignore his duties toward his findshis nemeses in alcohol and debauchery.This metonymic extended family, between the love of "modern"/English education (which stood for relationship the romanticindividual in nineteenth-century Bengal) and the slipperypath of WhoSpeaksfor"Indian" Pasts? 13

betweenNimchand and a Benalcohol is suggestedin the play bya conversation of a the colonial official bureaucracy, Deputy Magistrate.Nimchand's supergali cilious braggadocio about his command of the English language quickly and in middle-classBengali culruns to the subjectof drinks(synonymous, inevitably ture of the period, withabsolute decadence): in English, in English, think I read English, write dreamin EnglishEnglish, speechify what would mind no child's me,my goodfellow, youliketodrink?play-nowtell you,it's forheroes.36 formenand brandy Claretforladies,sherry A similarconnectionbetween the modern, "free"individual and selfishness was undiswas made in the literatureon women's education. The construction Freedom was used to mark a difference nationalist (and patriarchal). guisedly between what was "Indian" and what was "European/English."The ultra-free and shameless.As Kunwoman acted like a memsahib (European woman), selfish fora women'smagazine Bamabodhini said damala Devi, a woman writing patrika, in 1870: "Oh dear ones! If you have acquired real knowledge,then give no place behaviour.This is notbecomingin a Bengali housein yourheartto memsahib-like The idea of "true modesty"was mobilizedto build up thispictureof the wife."37 in 1920, Indira Devi dedicated her Narirukti Writing "really"Bengali woman.38 [A Woman Speaks]-interestingly enough, a defense of modern Bengali womanhood against criticisms by (predominantly)male writers-to generations of ideal Bengali women whom she thus described: "Unaffected by nature, of pleasant speech, untiringin theirservice[to others],obliviousof theirown pleaof others,and capable of being consures, [while] moved easilyby the suffering tentwithverylittle."39 This model of the "modern" Bengali/Indian woman-educated enough to appreciate the modern regulationsof the body and the state but yet "modest" and unselfish-was tied to the debates on "freeenough to be unselfassertive to do dom." "Freedom" in the West,severalauthorsargued, meantjathechhachar, In India, it was said, freedom meant as one pleased, the rightto self-indulgence. Notice how the freedomfromthe ego, the capacityto serveand obey voluntarily. in have changed positions the following and slavery termsfreedom quote: toothers and todharma oneself To be abletosubordinate acton] [duty/moral order/proper ofthesenses, arethefirst tasks thesoulfrom theslavery ofhuman freedom.... ... tofree in Indianfamilies are subordinate to theparents, wife to the That is why boysand girls thedisciple thestudent . .. and to theparents-in-law, to theguru, totheteacher husband ... thepeopleto theking, and prestige to [that thekingto dharma of] [andone's]dignity thecommunity [samaj]40 to thistheorizing thatneeds to be noted. Quite clearly, There was an ironicaltwist who did notapply to thedomesticservants thistheoryof "freedom-in-obedience" in this literature as of the mentioned were sometimes examples "truly"unfree, on the unfree the nationalistpointbeing that(European) observerscommenting
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statusof Indian women often missed (so some nationalists argued) this crucial were the servants betweenthe housewifeand the domestic.Obviously, distinction not yetincluded in the India of the nationalist imagination. in a colonial period Thus wentthe Bengali discourseon modern domesticity when the rise of a civilsocietyand a quasimodern statehad already insertedthe modern questions of "public" and "private"into middle-classBengali lives. The received bourgeois ideas about domesticityand connections between the domestic and the national were modified here in two significant ways. One normof cultural was to contraposethe as I have soughtto demonstrate, strategy, the patriarchalextended familyto the bourgeois patriarchalideals of the comwitha redefinedversionof the panionate marriage,to oppose the new patriarchy old one(s). Thus was foughtthe idea of the modern private.The other strategy, formsand was to mobilize,on behalfof the extended family, equally significant, the seemof collectivememorythatchallenged, albeit ambiguously, figurations time on which the very and "secular" of "sacred" absolute separation ingly eduThe figureof the "truly based.41 was/is modern ("European") idea of history of in discussion is this Indian" woman and invested, modest," cated,""truly "truly women's education, with a sacred authorityby subordinatingthe question of domesticlifeto religiousideas of femaleauspiciousnessthatjoined the heavenly of timethatcould be onlyantihistorical. withthe mundane in a conceptualization The trulymodern housewife,it was said, would be so auspicious as to mark the eternal return of the cosmic principle embodied in the goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of domestic well-beingby whose grace the extended family(and clan, lived and prosthe nation,Bharatlakshmi) and hence, byextendingthe sentiment, are the Lakshmisof "Women in a read Thus we pamphlet: contemporary pered. in the themselves to If theyundertake improve the community. sphere of dharma in [the qualityof] and knowledge . . . there will be an automaticimprovement social life."42 Lakshmi, regarded as the Hindu god Vishnu's wife by about A.D. 400, has for long been held up in popular Hinduism, and in the everyday as the model of the Hindu wife,unitedin complete pantheismof Hindu families, harmonywithher husband (and his family)throughwillfulsubmission,loyalty, When women did not followher ideals, it was said, the devotion,and chastity.43 the and (extended) family familyline were destroyedby the spiritof Alakshmi malevolentreverseof the Lakshmi principle.While and dark the (not-Lakshmi), women'seducation and the idea of disciplineas such were seldom opposed in this discourseregardingthe modern individualin colonial Bengal, theline was drawn and the demand forbourgeois privacythreatened at the point where modernity the power and the pleasures of the extended family. and patriarThere is no question thatthe speakingsubjecthere is nationalist chal, employing the cliched orientalistcategories,"the East" and "the West."44 However, of importance to us are the two denials on which this particular of the bourgeois rests:the denial, or at least contestation, momentof subjectivity Pasts? WhoSpeaksfor"Indian" 15

timebymakingthe family the denial of historical privateand, equally important, a in blended secular a siteiwherethe sacred and the perpetual reenactmentof a principlethatwas heavenlyand divine. invoked was by no means harmonious The cultural space the antihistorical it to be triedto portray nationalist or nonconflictual, thoughtof necessity though for extended of the norms so. The antihistorical example, family, patriarchal could only have had a contestedexistence,contestedboth by women's struggles follow did notnecessarily and bythoseof the subalternclasses.But thesestruggles narratives us to construct allow would lines that byputtingthe emancipatory any of The other. the on "liberals" the and side one on history "patriarchals"clearly lend to is caught up in too many contradictions modern "Indian" individuality itselfto such a treatment. I do not have the space here to develop the point,so I willmake do withone example. It comes fromthe autobiographyof Ramabai Ranade, the wifeof the M. G. social reformerfromthe Bombay Presidency, famous nineteenth-century was in part against the "old" Ranade. Ramabai Ranade's struggleforself-respect of com"new" patriarchy the for and of the extended order family patriarchal civilized most the as saw husband her which reform-minded panionate marriage, formof the conjugal bond. In pursuitof thisideal, Ramabai began to share her to public lifeand would oftentake part (in the 1880s) in husband's commitment As she of male and female social reformers. and deliberations public gatherings herselfsays: "It was at these meetingsthatI learntwhat a meetingwas and how one should conduct oneself at one."45Interestingly, however,one of the chief were (apart from men) the other sources of opposition to Ramabai's efforts There is of course no doubt that they,her mother-in-law women in the family. But it is and her husband's sisters, spoke forthe old patriarchalextended family. Ramabai's across come voices to their listen to instructive (as they through quite and theirown forms text),fortheyalso spoke fortheirown sense of self-respect of struggleagainst men: said to Ramabai] .... Even ifthemen You shouldnotreally [they go to thesemeetings You need notsayno: butafter them. should all, wantyouto do thesethings, ignore you You are of sheer boredom.... out will then do it. not need outdoing up, give They you eventheEuropeanwomen. Or this: Dada [Mr. of goingto meetings. wholovesthisfrivolousness It is she [Ramabai]herself Ranade]is notat all so keenaboutit.But shouldshe nothavesomesenseof proportion do? If men tellyou to do a hundredthings, of how muchthe womenshouldactually thesepractical all mendo notunderstand After womenshouldtakeup tenat themost. frivolous likethis.... Thatis why turned ... The goodwoman [inthepast]never things! in a respectable ... couldlivetogether thislargefamily way.... But nowit is all so difHow can we live to do three. is prepared thiswoman one thing, If Dada suggests ferent! all this? endure how can we and then of sense with (84-85) self-respect any
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of patriarthemesof nationalism, These voices,combiningthe contradictory chal clan-based ideology,of women's strugglesagainst men, and opposed at the same time to friendshipbetween husbands and wives, remind us of the deep of the modern privateand bourgeois ambivalences that marked the trajectory in colonial India. Yet historians manage, bymaneuversreminiscent individuality of the old "dialectical"card trickcalled "negationof negation,"to deny a subject position to this voice of ambivalence. The evidence of what I have called "the denial of the bourgeois privateand of the historical subject"is acknowledgedbut in accounts to the their subordinated supposedly higher purpose of making look like yetanother episode in the universaland (in theirview, Indian history of the nation state,of themes of the ultimately victorious)march of citizenship, human emancipation spelled out in the course of the European Enlightenment and after.It is the figureof the citizenthatspeaks throughthese histories.And returnto dominate so long as thathappens, myhyperrealEurope willcontinually the stories we tell. "The modern" will then continue to be understood, as Meaghan Morrishas so aptlyput it in discussingher own Australiancontext,"as and which is to a known elsewhere, happened history, somethingwhich has already be reproduced, mechanicallyor otherwise,witha local content."This can only leave us with a task of reproducing what Morris calls "the project of positive unoriginality."46

V Yet the "originality"-I concede thatthisis a bad term-of the idioms through which struggleshave been conducted in the Indian subcontinenthas oftenbeen in the sphere of the nonmodern. One does not have to subscribeto forinstance,to acknowledge thatthe metathe ideology of clannish patriarchy, was one of themostimporextended family and sanctified of the patriarchal phor In the struggle tantelementsin theculturalpoliticsof Indian nationalism. against and other the use of thisidiom-in songs, poetry, Britishrule, it was frequently formsof nationalistmobilization-that allowed "Indians" to fabricatea sense of communityand to retrieve for themselvesa subject position from which to thiswithan example fromthe lifeof Gandhi, address the British.I willillustrate "the fatherof the nation,"to highlightthe politicalimportanceof this cultural move on the part of the "Indian." My example refersto the year 1946. There had been ghastlyriotsbetween the Hindus and the Muslims in Calcutta over the impending partitionof the fastingin protestover countryinto India and Pakistan.Gandhi was in the city, recallsthe the behaviorof his own people. And here is how an Indian intellectual experience: WhoSpeaksfor"Indian" pasts? 17

in theevening and findfoodprepared their offices Men wouldcomebackfrom bythe for but soon it would the be that the revealed them; ready family [meaning womenfolk] of thehomehad noteatenthewholeday.They[apparently] had notfelt women hungry. or themother wouldadmit that couldnotunderstand thewife how Pressedfurther, they wasdying fortheir owncrimes. whenGandhiji Restaurants and couldgo on [eating] they someof them werevoluntarily centres did little closedbytheproamusement business; whentostart theredemptive process.47 dhijiknew
prietors .... The nerve of feelinghad been restored;the pain began to be felt .... Gan-

but the nature of the comWe do not have to take thisdescriptionliterally, in munityimagined in these lines is clear. It blends, GayatriSpivak'swords,"the thatbelongs to national linksand politicalorganizations" feelingof community whose structural model is the [clan or the with"thatother feelingof community Indian is Colonial extended] family."48 history replete with instances where to themselves withinthe Indians arrogated subjecthood preciselyby mobilizing, and sometimeson behalf of the modernizing context of "modern" institutions of collective of devices nationalism, memorythatwere both antihistorical project This is not to deny the capacityof "Indians" to act as subjects and antimodern.49 would recognizeas "a sense of history" endowed withwhatwe in the universities (whatPeterBurke calls "therenaissanceof the past")but to insistat the same time thatthere were also contrary trends,thatin the multifarious strugglesthattook of the in colonial antihistorical constructions often India, past providedvery place powerfulformsof collectivememory.50 There is then thisdouble bind throughwhichthe subjectof "Indian" history articulatesitself.On the one hand, it is both the subjectand the object of moderbecause it stands for an assumed unitycalled the "Indian people" that is nity, peasantry. alwayssplitintotwo-a modernizingeliteand a yet-to-be-modernized thatceleAs such a splitsubject,however,it speaks fromwithina metanarrative the theoretical brates the nation state; and of thismetanarrative subjectcan only be a hyperreal"Europe," a "Europe" constructedby the tales thatboth imperialism and nationalismhave told the colonized. The mode of self-representation that the "Indian" can adopt here is what Homi Bhabha has justly called even in the most dedicated socialistor nationalist Indian history, "mimetic."51 of a certain"modern" subject of "European" history hands, remains a mimicry of lack and failure.The transition narrative and is bound to representa sad figure willalwaysremain "grievously incomplete." On the other hand, maneuversare made withinthe space of the mimeticand thereforewithinthe project called "Indian" history-to representthe "difof the "Indian," and it is in thiscause thatthe antiference"and the "originality" "histories"of the subaltern historicaldevices of memoryand the antihistorical of "mythical" constructions classes are appropriated. Thus peasant/worker kingfinda place in textsdesignated "Indian" hisdoms and "mythical" pasts/futures to the rules torypreciselythrougha procedure thatsubordinatesthesenarratives
18 REPRESENTATIONS

of "history" must of evidence and to the secular,linear calendar thatthe writing cannot speak itselfas antimodernsubject,therefore, follow.The antihistorical, even when these "theory"withinthe knowledge procedures of the university knowledgeproceduresacknowledgeand "document"itsexistence.Much likeSpivak's "subaltern"(or the anthropologist's peasant who can only have a quoted thatbelongs to the anthropologist existencein a largerstatement alone), thissubof for and the transition narrative that will can be by ject spoken only spoken privilegethe modern (i.e., "Europe").52 alwaysultimately So long as one operates withinthe discourse of "history" produced at the it is not possiblesimplyto walk out of the deep institutional siteof the university, of citizenship, and themodernizing bourcollusionbetween"history" narrative(s) is state. as a "History" knowledgesystem geois public and private,and the nation embedded in institutional practicesthat invoke the nation state at every firmly of teaching, the and recruitment, organization politics promotions, step-witness that survive the occasional brave and publicationin history politics departments, to liberate"history" fromthe metaand heroic attempts by individualhistorians a narrativeof the nation state. One only has to ask, forinstance:Why is history in of of modern all countries education the today person compulsory part without ituntilas late as theeighteenth includingthosethatdid quite comfortably world children all over the should todayhave to come to termswith century? Why when we know thatthiscompulsion is neithernatural a subject called "history" It does not take much imaginationto see thatthe reason for this nor ancient?53 nationalismshave achieved lies in what European imperialismand third-world of the nation state as the most desirable formof the universalization together: have the Nation states to capacity enforcetheirtruthgames, politicalcommunity. distancenotwithstanding, are part of the battery of and universities, theircritical in "Economics" and are the knowlinstitutions this process. "history" complicit thatthe rise (and later edge formsthatcorrespond to the two major institutions of order has to the the world-the capitalist universalization) bourgeois given mode of productionand the nation state("history" speaking to the figureof the A criticalhistorianhas no choice but to negotiatethisknowledge. She citizen).54 or he thereforeneeds to understand the stateon its own terms,i.e., in termsof Since these themes narrativesof citizenshipand modernity. its self-justificatory willalwaystake us back to the universalist propositionsof "modern" (European) the "practical"science of economics that now seems political philosophy-even of world systemsis (theoretically) rooted in the "natural" to our constructions is conthird-world historian ideas of ethics in eighteenth-century Europe55-a demned to knowing"Europe" as theoriginalhome of the "modern,"whereas the "European" historiandoes not share a comparable predicamentwithregard to of humankind.Thus followsthe everydaysubalternity the pasts of the majority of non-Western histories withwhichI began thispaper. withour different Yet the understandingthat"we" all do "European" history WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts? 19

of a politicsand project and oftennon-European archivesopens up thepossibility of alliance between the dominant metropolitan histories and the subaltern peripheral pasts. Let us call this the project of provincializing"Europe," the nationalismhave, by their "Europe" that modern imperialismand (third-world) collaborativeventureand violence,made universal.Philosophically, this project must ground itselfin a radical critiqueand transcendenceof liberalism(i.e., of of citizenship, modern state,and bourgeois prithe bureaucraticconstructions has a ground that late Marx that classical political philosophy produced), vacy shares withcertainmomentsin both poststructuralist thoughtand feminist phiIn I am emboldened Carole Pateman's by courageous declalosophy. particular, the veryconceptionof ration-in her remarkablebook TheSexualContract-that the modern individualbelongs to patriarchalcategoriesof thought.56

VI The project of provincializing that does "Europe" refersto a history not yet exist; I can thereforeonly speak of it in a programmaticmanner. To I mustspell out whatitis notwhileoutlining forestall however, misunderstanding, what it could be. To begin with, itdoes notcall fora simplistic, out-of-hand rejectionof moderliberal science, reason, universals, narratives, values, grand totalizing nity, explanations, and so on. FredricJameson has recentlyreminded us that the easy and "a politequation oftenmade between"a philosophicalconceptionof totality" is "baleful."57 What intervenes betweenthe two is ical practiceof totalitarianism" whose outcomesare history-contradictory, plural,and heterogeneousstruggles in accordance withschemas thatseek to never predictable,even retrospectively, These strugglesinclude coercion naturalize and domesticatethisheterogeneity. and symbolic (both on behalf of and against modernity)-physical,institutional, idealism-and it is thisviolence that violence,oftendispensed withdreamy-eyed of meaning, in the creation of truth plays a decisive role in the establishment in it whose and which "universal" wins.As intellectuals as were, regimes, deciding, and cannot pretend operatingin academia, we are not neutralto these struggles to situateourselves outside of the knowledgeprocedures of our institutions. cannotbe a projectof "culThe projectof provincializing "Europe" therefore It cannot originatefromthe stance thatthe reason/science/unituralrelativism." and versalswhichhelp defineEurope as the modernare simply "culture-specific" For cultures. the is to the not that therefore European Enlightonlybelong point enment rationalismis alwaysunreasonable in itselfbut rathera matterof documenting how-through what historicalprocess-its "reason," which was not to everyone,has been made to look "obvious"farbeyond the alwaysself-evident ground where itoriginated.If a language, as has been said, is but a dialectbacked
20 REPRESENTATIONS

up by an army,the same could be said of the narrativesof "modernity"that, almost universallytoday,point to a certain "Europe" as the primaryhabitus of the modern. but the an imaginaryentity, This Europe, like "the West,"is demonstrably as such does not lessen itsappeal or power.The projectof provindemonstration cializing"Europe" has to include certainotheradditional moves: 1) the recogniforitself is a piece of global tion thatEurope's acquisitionof the adjectivemodern of is the of which an story European imperialism;and 2) the integralpart history of certain versionof Europe with"modernity" understandingthatthisequating a is not the work of Europeans alone; third-world nationalisms,as modernizing in have been excellence, equal partners the process. I do not mean ideologies par momentsin thecareersof thesenationalisms;I only to overlookthe anti-imperial underscore the point that the project of provincializing "Europe" cannot be a or atavistic nationalist, nativist, project.In unravelingthenecessaryentanglement of history-a disciplined and institutionally regulated form of collective of the nation state, narratives the "citizenship," "rights," grand memory-with "India" at the same one cannot but and problematize "private"spheres, "public" timeas one dismantles"Europe." of modernity the ambivalences,contraThe idea is to writeinto the history dictions,the use of force,and the tragediesand the ironies thatattend it. That the rhetoricand the claims of (bourgeois) equality,of citizens'rights,of selfdeterminationthrough a sovereign nation state have in many circumstances empowered marginal social groups in theirstrugglesis undeniable-this recogWhat effectively is played Studies. nitionis indispensableto the projectof Subaltern or celebrate the advent in that either histories down, however, implicitly explicitly of is the and violence that idea of the modern stateand the repression citizenship in the victory of the modern as is the persuasivepower of its are as instrumental rhetoricalstrategies.Nowhere is this irony-the undemocraticfoundationsof "democracy"-more visible than in the historyof modern medicine, public health, and personal hygiene, the discourses of which have been central in of the public and the private locatingthe body of the modern at the intersection (as defined by,and subject to negotiationswith,the state). The triumphof this on itsbehalf, discourse,however,has alwaysbeen dependent on the mobilization, because thiscoercionis both means of physicalcoercion. I say"always" of effective as wellas pandemic and quotidian. Of foun(i.e., historic) originary/foundational dational violence, David Arnold gives a good example in a recent essay on the of the prison in India. The coercionof the colonial prison,Arnold shows, history was integral to some of the earliest and pioneering research on the medical, of India, for the prison was where Indian dietary,and demographic statistics Of the coercion thatconbodies were accessible to modernizinginvestigators.58 a recentexample comes from tinues in the names of the nation and modernity, the Indian campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. Two American doctors WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"pasts? 21

in the process thus (one of thempresumablyof "Indian" origin)who participated describe theiroperationsin a villageof the Ho tribein the Indian stateof Bihar: In themiddleof gentle Indiannight, an intruder burst thebamboodoorof the through a hut. He was underordersto breakresistance adobe vaccinator, government simple vaccination. Lakshmi awokescreaming and scrambled tohidehersmallpox Singh against an axe, and chasedtheintruder intothe self.Her husbandleaped out of bed, grabbed and policemen MohanSingh. Outsidea squadofdoctors quickly courtyard. overpowered a secondvaccinator The instant he was pinnedto theground, vaccine jabbed smallpox a wiry intohisarm.MohanSingh, leaderoftheHo tribe, from 40-year-old squirmed away tobleed.The government theneedle, thevaccination site teamheldhimuntil causing they rebuffed had injected him,therestof the enoughvaccine.... Whilethetwopolicemen theentire and vaccinated eachin turn. Lakshmi teamoverpowered family Singhbitdeep intoone doctor's hand,butto no avail.59 of There is no escaping the idealism thataccompanies thisviolence. The subtitle the articlein question unselfconsciously and the doreproducesboththe military of the enterprise.It reads: "How an armyof samaritansdrove gooding instincts smallpox fromthe earth." Histories that aim to displace a hyperrealEurope from the center toward will have to seek out relentwhich all historicalimaginationcurrently gravitates lesslythisconnectionbetween violence and idealism thatlies at the heart of the of citizenship and modernity come to finda natprocess bywhichthe narratives I registera fundamentaldisagreementhere witha posiural home in "history." tion taken by Richard Rorty in an exchange with Jurgen Habermas. Rorty criticizesHabermas for the latter'sconviction"thatthe storyof modern philosof the democraticsocieties'attempts at selfpartof the story ophy is an important follows of statement the reassurance."60 Rorty's practice manyEuropeanistswho of these "democratic societies" as if these were selfof the histories speak if as the self-fashioning of the West contained historiescomplete in themselves, were somethingthatoccurred only withinits self-assigned geographicalboundaries. At the very least Rortyignores the role that the "colonial theater"(both external and internal)-where the theme of "freedom" as defined by modern invoked in aid of the ideas of "civilization," political philosophywas constantly "development"-played in the process of engendering "progress,"and latterly this "reassurance." The task, as I see it, will be to wrestleideas that legitimize in order to return to political the modern state and its attendantinstitutions, as the same coins returned to their owners in an way suspect philosophy-in Indian bazaar-its categorieswhose global currencycan no longer be taken for granted.61 And, finally-since "Europe" cannot after all be provincializedwithinthe whose knowledgeprotocolswillalwaystake us site of the university institutional back to the terrainwhere all contoursfollowthatof myhyperrealEurope-the Europe mustrealize withinitselfits own impossibility. project of provincializing

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thatembodies thispoliticsof despair. It will have It thereforelooks to a history or for atavistic, been clear by now that this is not a call for cultural relativism which histories. Nor is thisa programfora simplerejectionof modernity, nativist deliberI ask for a that suicidal. would be, in many situations, history politically of itsnarrative within theverystructure itsown represforms, atelymakes visible, sive strategiesand practices,the part it plays in collusion withthe narrativesof in assimilating to the projectsof the modern stateall other possibilicitizenships The politicsof despair willrequire of such history that ties of human solidarity. it lays bare to its readers the reasons whysuch a predicamentis necessarilyinesthatwillattemptthe impossible:to look towarditsown capable. This is a history at transladeath by tracingthatwhichresistsand escapes the best human effort so thatthe world mayonce again tion across culturaland other semioticsystems, be imagined as radicallyheterogeneous.This, as I have said, is impossiblewithin forthe globality of academia is not the knowledge protocolsof academic history, thatthe European modern has created. To attempt independent of the globality this"Europe" is to see themodernas inevitably to provincialize contested,to write of citizenship of human othernarratives over the givenand privilegednarratives where colconnectionsthatdraw sustenancefromdreamed-up pastsand futures nor bythe nightmare of are definedneitherbythe ritualsof citizenship lectivities sites creates.There are of course no (infra)structural that"modernity" "tradition" where such dreams could lodge themselves.Yet theywill recur so long as the themes of citizenshipand the nation statedominate our narrativesof historical forthese dreams are whatthe modern repressesin order to be. transition,

Notes
audiences in the United States and Australiahave responded to verMany different sions of this paper and helped me with their criticisms.My benefactors are too but the following have been particularly numerous to mentionindividually helpful: for criticismsconveyed through Thomas the editorial board of Representations Laqueur; Benedict Anderson, Arjun Appadurai, David Arnold, Marjorie Beale, Partha Chatterjee,Natalie Davis, Nicholas Dirks,Simon During,John Foster,Ranajit Guha, JeanetteHoorn, MartinJay, JennyLee, David Lloyd, Fiona Nicoll, Gyanendra and GayatriSpivak. And veryspecial thanksto Scott, Pandey,Craig Reynolds,Joan and the physicallabor thatwent ChristopherHealy for sharingboth the intellectual into thispaper. Studies(New 1. Ranajit Guha and GayatriChakravorty Subaltern Spivak, eds., Selected of India," Modern AsianStudies Constructions York, 1988); Ronald Inden, "Orientalist 20, no. 3 (1986): 445. 2. I am indebtedtoJean Baudrillard forthetermhyperreal (see his Simulations [New York, fromhis. 1983]), but myuse differs 3. Linda Hutcheon, ThePolitics (London, 1989), 65. ofPostmodernism Who Speaks for"Indian"lPasts? 23

and Transcendental 4. Edmund Husserl, The CrisisofEuropeanSciences trans. Philosophy, David Carr (Evanston, Ill., 1970), 281-85. See also Wilhelm Halbfass, India and (New York, 1988), 167-68. Europe:An Essayin Understanding Foundations 5. See the discussion in Karl Marx, Grundrisse: of the Critique of Political Martin Nicholas and in trans. 469-512; (Harmondsworth, 1973), Economy, Eng., 3 vols. (Moscow, 1971), 3:593-613. Marx, Capital:A Critique ofPolitical Economy, 6. See Dipesh Chakrabarty, RethinkingWorking-Class History:Bengal, 1890-1940 7. (Princeton,N.J., 1989), chap. 7. Marx, Capital,1:60. 8. Marx, Grundrisse, 105. 9. See Chakrabarty, History, Rethinking Working-Class chap. 7, in particular. 10. Sumit Sarkar,Modern India, 1885-1947 (Delhi, 1985), 1. 43. The wordsquoted here are Guha's. But Subaltern 11. Guha and Spivak,Selected Studies, I thinktheyrepresenta sense of historiographical thatis shared by all responsibility the membersof the SubalternStudies collective. 3 vols. (London, 1812-16), dedication,vol. 1. 12. Alexander Dow, History ofHindostan, 13. See L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (New York,1964), 26-27. Indian (New York, 1989), dedi14. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, TheAutobiography ofan Unknown cation page. and theColonialWorld: A Derivative Discourse? 15. Partha Chatterjee,Nationalist Thought (London, 1986). rachanabali 16. Mudhusudan [Bengali] (Calcutta, 1965), 449. See also JogindranathBasu, MichaelMadhusudan Datterjibancharit [Bengali] (Calcutta, 1978), 86. 17. My understandingof thispoem has been enrichedby discussionswithMarjorie Levinson and David Bennett. 18. I am not makingthe claim thatall of these genres necessarily emerge withbourgeois individualism.See Natalie Zemon Davis, "Fame and Secrecy: Leon Modena's Lifeas and Theory an Early Modern Autobiography," 27 (1988): 103-18; and Davis, History "Boundaries and Sense of Self in Sixteenth-Century France,"in Thomas C. Heller et and theSelf in Western Individualism: al., eds., Reconstructing Autonomy, Individuality, See also 53-63. Calif., 1986), (Stanford, Philippe Lejeune, On Autobiography, Thought trans.KatherineLeary (Minneapolis, 1989), 163-84. 19. See the chapteron Nehru in Chatterjee,Nationalist Thought. vol. 10 (AhmedWorks 20. M. K. Gandhi,Hindswaraj(1909), in Collected Gandhi, ofMahatma abad, 1963), 15. and British Studies 21. See the discussion in Gauri Visvanathan,MasksofConquest: Literary Rule in India (London, 1989), 128-41, passim. in ColonialIndia (New Delhi, 22. Ranajit Guha, Elementary of PeasantInsurgency Aspects 1983), chap. 2. andModernity Political 23. WilliamE. Connolly, (Oxford, 1989). See also David BenTheory nett, "Postmodernism and Vision: Ways of Seeing (at) the End of History" (forthcoming). An Inquiry intoa 24. Jirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation ofthePublic Sphere: ofBourgeois Society (Cambridge,Mass., 1989), 49. Category in Iqbal Khan, ed., 25. See Sumit Sarkar,"Social History:Predicamentand Possibilities," India and Pakistan: on and Fresh on Politics, Culture (Oxford, Essays Economics, Perspective 1985), 256-74. 26. For reasons of space, I shall leave thisclaim here unsubstantiated, though I hope to to discussitin detail elsewhere.I should qualifythe statement have an opportunity by

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27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

thatin the main it refersto autobiographiespublishedbetween 1850 and mentioning 1910. Once women join the public sphere in the twentiethcentury,their selfdimensions. fashioningtakes on different Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, GreatAnarch!: India,1921-1952 (London, 1987), 35051. See Karl Marx, On the in EarlyWritings Question, (Harmondsworth, Jewish Eng., 1975), 215-22. For a more detailed treatment of what follows, see my paper "Colonial Rule and the Domestic Order,"to be published in David Arnold and David Hardiman, eds., Subalvol. 8. tern Studies, Meredith Borthwick,The Changing Role of Women in Bengal,1849-1905 (Princeton, Debutante: toModN.J., 1984); Ghulam Murshid,Reluctant Response ofBengaliWomen 1849-1905 (Rajshahi, 1983). On the historyof the word civilization, see ernisation, Evolution of a Word and a Group of Ideas," in Peter Lucien Febvre, "Civilisation: From theWritings trans.K. Folca (London, ofFebvre, Burke, ed., A NewKind ofHistory: 1973), 219-57. I owe thisreferenceto PeterSahlins. James Mill, TheHistory India, vol. 1, ed. H. H. Wilson (London, 1840), 309ofBritish 10. Role. Borthwick, Changing The classic text where this assumption has been worked up into philosophy is of trans.T.M. Knox (Oxford, 1967), 110-22. See also course Hegel'sPhilosophy ofRight, "Women and the Hegelian State," in Ellen Kennedy and Susan Joanna Hodge, in Western Mendus, eds., Women (Brighton,Eng., 1987), 127-58; Simon Philosophy Romance, and Other RelationsBetween the During, "Rousseau's Heirs: Primitivism, and thePublic Modern and the Nonmodern" (forthcoming); Joan B. Landes, Women in the French Revolution in the N.Y., (Ithaca, 1988); Mary Ryan, Women Age of Sphere Bannersand Ballots,1825-1880 (Baltimore,1990). Public:Between vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1877), 28-29. Anon., Streesiksha, in Dipesh Chakrabarty, I develop this argument further "Open Space/PublicPlace: Asia and South India," (forthcoming). Garbage, Modernity, Dinabandhuracanabali, ed. KshetraGupta (Calcutta, 1981), 138. Borthwick, Role, 105. Changing I discuss thisin more detail in Chakrabarty, "Colonial Rule." Indira Devi, Narirukti(Calcutta, 1920), dedication page. Deenanath Bandyopadhyaya,Nanabishayak prabandha(Calcutta, 1887), 30-31. For a and freedom as used in the colonial discourse of British genealogyof the termsslavery Histories: in Colonial India India, see Gyan Prakash,Bonded Genealogies ofLaborServitude 1990). (Cambridge, Senseofthe Past(London, 1970). Peter Burke, TheRenaissance Bikshuk [ChandrasekharSen], Ki holo!(Calcutta, 1876), 77. DivineFeminine Hindu Goddesses: Visions in the TraDavid Kinsley, Hindu Religious ofthe dition(Berkeley, 1988), 19-31; Manomohan Basu, Hindu acar byabahar (Calcutta, 1873), 60; H. D. Bhattacharya,"Minor Religious Sects,"in R. C. Majumdar, ed., The and Culture IndianPeople:TheAgeofImperial vol. 2 (Bombay, 1951), ofthe History Unity, Lakshmi:Originand Development 469-71; Upendranath Dhal, Goddess (Delhi, 1978). The expressioneveryday was suggestedto me byGayatriChakravorty pantheism Spivak (personal communication). See the chapter on Bankim in Chatterjee,Nationalist Thought. trans.KusumavatiDeshpande (Delhi, 1963), 77. Ranade: His Wife's Reminiscences,

Who Speaks for"Indian" Pasts?

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11 (Summer 46. Meaghan Morris, "Metamorphoses at Sydney Tower,"New Formations 1990): 10. 47. Amiya Chakravarty, Political Discourse(London, quoted in Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi's 163. 1989), 48. GayatriChakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?," in Cary Nelson and Lawand the rence Grossberg,eds., Marxism (Urbana, Ill., 1988), 277. Interpretation ofCulture vols. 1-7 (Delhi, 1982-91); and Ashis Nandy,TheIntimate 49. See Subaltern Studies, Enemy: Colonialism Loss and Recovery (Delhi, 1983). ofSelfUnder vols. 1-7, and Guha, Elementary 50. Subaltern Studies, Aspects. 51. Homi Bhabha, "Of Mimicryand Man: The Ambivalenceof Colonial Discourse," in AnnetteMichelsonet al., eds., October: TheFirst Decade,1976-1986 (Cambridge,Mass., (London, 1990). 1987), 317-26; also Bhabha, ed., Nationand Narration 52. Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Also see Spivak's interview published in Socialist Review20, no. 3 (July-September1990): 81-98. in 53. On the close connectionbetweenimperialist ideologies and the teachingof history colonial India, see Ranajit Guha, An IndianHistoriography India: A of Nineteenth-Century (Calcutta, 1988). Agendaand ItsImplications themin the entirety of thisargument,I may mention 54. Withoutin any way implicating thatthereare parallelshere betweenmystatement and whatGyan Prakash and Nicholas Dirks have argued elsewhere. See Gyan Prakash, "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectivesfrom Indian Historiography," Comparative in Society and History Studies 32, no. 2 (April 1990): 383-408; Nicholas B. Dirks, "Hisof PublicCulture a the as Modern," 2, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 25-33. tory Sign 55. See Amartya Kumar Sen, Of Ethicsand Economics (Oxford, 1987). Tessa MorrisSuzuki's A History (London, 1989) makes interesting ofJapaneseEconomicThought reading in thisregard. I am gratefulto Gavan McCormack forbringingthisbook to myattention. 56. Carole Pateman, TheSexualContract (Stanford,Calif., 1988), 184. and the 57. FredricJameson, "Cognitive Mapping," in Nelson and Grossberg,Marxism 354. Interpretation ofCulture, 58. David Arnold,"The Colonial Prison:Power,Knowledge,and Penologyin Nineteenthvol. 8. I have discussed Studies, CenturyIndia," in Arnold and Hardiman, Subaltern some of these issues in a Bengali article:Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Sarir,samaj, o rashtra: 1988. Oupanibeshik bharate mahamariojanasangskriti," Anustup, "Death fora KillerDisease," Quest,May/June 59. Lawrence BrilliantwithGirija Brilliant, 1978, 3. I owe thisreferenceto Paul Greenough. in RichardJ. Bernstein, "Habermas and Lyotardon Postmodernity," 60. Richard Rorty, and Habermas 169. Mass., ed., 1986), Modernity (Cambridge, and revisionist 61. For an interesting reading of Hegel in thisregard, see the exchange between Charles Taylor and Partha Chatterjee in Public Culture 3, no. 1 (1990). My a smallbeginningin thisdirection. book Rethinking History attempts Working-Class

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