the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Subaltern Studies VII: Writings on South Asian History and Society by Partha Chatterjee; Gyanendra Pandey; Broken Promises: Popular Protest, Indian Nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar, 1935-1946 by Vanita Damodaran; Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri, 1869-1947 by Ranajit Das Gupta; Rural India: Land, Power and Society under British Rule by Peter Robb; Society and Ideology: Essays in South Asian H ... Review by: David Kopf The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Summer, 1995), pp. 181-183 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/205619 . Accessed: 18/09/2013 03:33
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SubalternStudies VII: Writingson South Asian History and Society.Edited by Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey (New York, Oxford University Press, I993) 264 pp. $24 BrokenPromises:PopularProtest,Indian Nationalismand the CongressParty in Bihar, 1935-1946. By Vanita Damodaran (New York, Oxford University Press, I993) 375 PP. $35 Economy, Society and Politicsin Bengal:Jalpaiguri, 1869-1947. By Ranajit Das Gupta (New York, Oxford University Press, I993) 325 pp. $24 Rural India: Land, Powerand Society Under BritishRule. Edited by Peter Robb (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993) 312 pp. $12.95 Society and Ideology:Essays in South Asian History Presentedto Professor K. A. Ballhatchet. Edited by Peter Robb (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993) 266 pp $24 Except for the Ballhatchet Festschrift, these Oxford publications represent-in a highly polemical tone-current, trendy and politically correct versions of Indian history under British colonialism. There are at least five rules prescribed in the new historiography: Focus on what Guha calls "subaltern," or that which is vaguely equivalent to the lower echelons of society; prefer rural history to urban history, except in cases of elite exploitation of nonelites or the subalternization of elites in the game of musical chairs with the British establishment in India; treat all the British regardless of age, gender, occupation, or intelligence level as arrogant, hegemonic racists; ignore methodologically, in essays, all previous work on British India, substitute philosophical (armchair)discourse for the rigors of historical scholarship, and support your argument by pontificating loudly rather than submitting evidence; illuminate the work of Marxist-oriented groups in the countryside during the nationalist era, who organized subalterns to recognize their own class interest, not so much against the British as against the self-seeking dominant elite within the Congress leadership.l Societyand Ideology,dedicated to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) historian, K. A. Ballhatchet, and edited by Peter Robb, is a refreshing reminder of the pre-Orwellian (1984) past when diversity was encouraged, and historians were free to choose area, subject, and interpretation. To be sure, since Robb identifies with the new history, the ten distinguished scholars all seem to have been coerced into addressing the question of British hegemony. And it should surprise no one that even among the older scholars such as Geoffrey Oddie on the
Studies.See "Tribute to Guha," I Ranajit Guha has edited the first six volumes of Subaltern Studies VII. preface to Subaltern

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debate about hook-swinging and Ian Catanach on Anglo-Indian interaction during the Bombay plague, there should be a tendency to resolve the hegemony issue by labeling the British in India as villains. Nevertheless, in essays like John Rogers' "Colonial perceptions of ethnicity in nineteenth-century Sri Lanka" and Dagmar Engels' "The politics of childbirth: British and Bengali women in contest," the intentions and objectives of differing Britishers in South Asia are presented intelligently and objectively. It is also a delight to read Peter Hardy, the veteran Islamic historian, in the process of reconsidering Indo-Muslim historiography in what is probably the most convoluted essay in the volume. Robb's edited anthology on rural India is radically deconstructionist. One wonders where all this rage against the past comes from. Burton Stein, for example, gives us a brilliantly analytical historiography of current thinking on Vijayanagarastate and society, but not so much to enlighten us as "to correct the distorted use of the Vijayanagarapast and to contribute to a proper delineation of indigenous ideology" (28). The attitude of Robb, Stein, and others in the volume is reminiscent of Mao Tse Tung's Cultural Revolution. From an interdisciplinary point of view, at least four of the contributions (Robb's on the state, peasants, and moneylenders, Dharma Kumar's on land control, Jacques Pouchepadass' on land, power, and market, and Neil Charles' on the fragmentation of landholdings) are all, as Robb warns the reader in the introduction, far more akin to economics than to history. Noteworthy about volume VII of Subaltern Studies is the new approved focus on the intellectual elite under British colonialism. Partha Chatterjee applies the term subalterneity quite convincingly to the Calcutta middle class during the nineteenth-century Bengal Renaissance. He depicts a class plagued by fears and anxieties as it seeks to bridge the gap between its rustic origins and the quasimodern system imposed by the colonialist overlord. It is the lead article by Sudipta Kaviraj on "The Imaginary Institution of India" that reflects the shortcomings-mostly methodologicalof the subaltern discourse as it is articulated by its ardent champions. Like Chatterjee, Kaviraj is a specialist on the Bengal Renaissance period and is currently at work on a book dealing with Bankim Chandra Chatthopadyay, the novelist and philosopher. It is incredible that this article on the idea of nationalism among the subalternized intelligentsia of Bengal was written by Kaviraj without the support of a single source dealing with Bengali intellectual, social, or cultural history in either the Bengali or English language. Instead of backing up his often wild generalizations with archival sources, which was required of scholars in the predeconstructionist days, Kaviraj turns to the ubiquitous Antonio Gramsci, who, together with Sumit Sarkar and Guha, seems to be the most definitive authority on all that is worth knowing in modern Indian history. This exaggeration aside, Kaviraj also relies heavily on the writings of Toennies, Gellner, Olson, and other Western theorists as primary

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sources for an article dealing with the history of ideas in Bengal a century or more ago.2 More authentically subaltern history are Damodaran's book on popular protest and Indian nationalism in Bihar, 1935-I946, and Das Gupta's on economy, society, and politics inJalpaiguri, 1869-1947. Both studies are fully documented from available local sources and deal with peasants, share-croppers, unionized workers, tribals, and other marginal groups in Bihar and Bengal. The best that can be said for such work is that it represents a new historiographical school that shifts attention from the national scene of Congress politics, where it has generally been viewed, to the state and local scene, which presents a very different picture. The two scholars depict a conflict between elitist nationalists and the subalterns about broken promises by the Congress leadership. Noteworthy is the role of the communists who organize the subalterns and generate a sense of underclass consciousness among the masses. These studies were probably written in the early I98os, when Marxism could still inspire the young as an ideology of salvation with a future. The books cannot conceal the weaknesses that stem from this enthusiasm or the wishful thinking that invariably accompanied Marxism. Both of these monographs expect us to believe, for example, that the communists in Bihar and Bengal were able to convince the Hindu and Muslim subalterns that their unity on behalf of class interest was of far greater benefit to them than their communal identity. It is astonishing that after nearly a century of betrayal, incompetence, and mass murder by the Joseph Stalins, Maos, and Pol Pots of the world-communist movement, Das Gupta can still sentimentalize about communist "compassion for suffering people" (x). David Kopf University of Minnesota The Making of a Hinterland:State, Society, and Economy in Inland North China, 1853-1937. By Kenneth Pomeranz (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993) 336 pp. $40 cloth $I7 paper Pomeranz writes about the decline of a region in north China that he calls Huang-Yun because it was at the confluence of the Yellow River (Huang he) and the Grand Canal (Yun he), which had been China's major north-south transport route until the government abandoned it in favor of sea transport. Huang-Yun incorporated the western part of Shandong province and adjacent portions of the Zhili/Hebei and Henan
2

Ferdinand Toennies, On Sociology:Pure, Applied and Empirical(Chicago, 197I); Ernest Action Gellner, Nations and Nationalism(Oxford, 1983); Mancur Olson, The Logicof Collective (Cambridge, Mass., I97I).

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