Pointing out that postcolonial subjectivity
has developed in ways not predicted by
In Search of ‘Postcolonial
Subjectivity’
The Insurrection of the Little
Selves: The Crisis of Secular-
Nationalism in India new theorisation of its chequered history
by Aditya Nigam; in India. For Nigam, the prolifera­tion of
Oxford University Press, separatist movements and identity politics
New Delhi, 2006; of all kinds that have marked the political
pp 362, Rs 650.
Townsend Middleton
I s there such thing as postcolonial
subjectivity? If so, what is its relation
to the astounding array of identity politics
we have seen irrupt across India in recent
decades? These two questions lie at the
heart of Aditya Nigam’s new book The
Insurrection of the Little Selves: The Crisis
of Secular-Nationalism in India, and, ap­
parently, on the minds of many post­colonial
theorists. Questions of this magnitude
demand ambitious scholarship; on this
count, Nigam’s book does not disappoint.
Written over a decade since the debate
over secular-nationalism in India reached
its high-water mark, Nigam’s book retraces
the contours of these debates within a
broader history of the ideology of secular-
nationalism itself. With the benefits of
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hindsight and razor-sharp critique, the book
provides, at once, a much-needed review
of the debates over this ideology and a
climate of India since the 1980s amount to
a profound crisis for secular-nationalism.
These “insurrections of the little selves”
signal not only the impossibility of secular-
nationalism’s project in India, but also
something more sinister regarding the
prospects of pristine liberal democracy
in the postcolonial world. Within Nigam’s
model, subjectivity becomes the key (mis)
operator in this broken equation of poli­tical
modernity, and as such, the lynchpin of
these “insurrections” and the failings of
the secular-nationalist project in India.
Model of Subjectivity
Following Nietzsche and Heidegger,
Nigam initiates his argument with a critique
of the modernist assumptions of subject-
centred reason that support the theoretical
logic of liberal democracy and abstract
citizenship, both of which he sees as cardi­
nal tenets of secular-nationalist ideo­logy.
Economic and Political Weekly  October 20, 2007
this brand of enlightenment thinking,
Nigam argues that what emerges then “is
not always the individuated modern self
that is assumed to be the basis of all demo­
cratic citizenship, but also a new kind of
subject/agent that Hannah Arendt has
called the ‘mass man’. Contrary to the
common assumption that all individuals
desire autonomy, this kind of an individual
presents a fundamental problem for demo­
cratic theory insofar as s/he embodies
what Erich Fromm calls the ‘fear of free­
dom’ – a fear of the alienation and loneli­
ness of modern life” (p 305). “Uprooted
from his hold contexts, habitat and com­
munity, of which he retains but a trace in
his memory (p 9)… The only language
that this agent finds ‘ready at hand’ is the
language of community, always at odds
with the abstract universalist language of
modern politics” (p 14).
To bolster his model of subjectivity,
Nigam calls upon the work of Memmi and
Fanon to bring the effects of colonialism
into the equation. Using what he will call
the Memmi-Fanon thesis of postcolonial
subjectivity, Nigam argues that colonial
subjugation has produced a rupture in the
subjectivity of the postcolonial subject. Ac­
cording to the models of Memmi and Fanon,
the native intellectual necessarily first
assimi­lated with the culture of the coloniser,
only then to rediscover who s/he really was,
often inventing memories, and hence fabri­
cated a continuity with the past. This anxi­
ety over identity, Nigam maintains, has sig­
nificantly altered the development of
nationalist thought in postcolonial societies,
often leading to xenophobic biases cloaked
in discourses of liberal nationalism.
As can be inferred from its title, this
book is necessarily concerned with class
and other markers of social distinction
constitutive of the many “little selves” an­
nouncing themselves upon the nation.
With Arendt’s ideas on “mass man” and
Memmi and Fanon’s on the postcolonial
intellectual, the book thus presents us
with a theory of lower and upper class
subjectivities, respectively. Unfortunately,
these facets of sociological differentiation
are obfuscated in Nigam’s own model of
subjectivity, leaving the reader with a
confounding theory of postcolonial sub­
jectivity that is problematic both theoreti­
cally and methodologically. It is the latter
that is especially concerning.
Despite, or, perhaps, because of, its
heady scholarship, in Nigam’s book there
is a persistent slippage between commen­
tary and data, with the former often
standing in for the latter. Take, for in­
stance, Chapter 3 ‘Antinomies of Secular­
ism: The Social Career of the Concept’.
An erudite reading of the debates over
secular-nationalism in India since the
1980s, this chapter offers a concise, evoc­
ative overview of one of India’s most fas­
cinating intellectual debates in recent de­
cades. The problem is that as one moves
through the competing arguments of Nandy,
Sarkar, Chatterjee, et al, we are asked to be­
lieve that these opinions were the “social
career of the concept”. Very little is done
to contextualise or connect these scholarly
writings with the actual identity politics
that marked the era of their entextualisa­
tion. In short, the theoretical com­­mentary
on the world is left to stand for the world
itself. This leads to provocative, but com­
pounded theory. The same metho­do­logical
problem holds for Nigam’s analysis of
subjectivity.
Question of Subjectivity
By definition, the question of subjecti­
vity is about experience. To make claims
about another’s subjectivity is to make
profound claims upon his/her being. It is
to infer understanding of an interiority
that we – not merely as researchers, but as
humans – have neither direct nor privi­
leged access. The sociological phenome­
nologist Albert Schutz, pointed this out
decades ago; his thoughts are especially
poignant for postcolonial critique today.
For Schutz the impossibility of pure
intersubjectivity did not spell the end of
the questioning of subjectivity for social
science, rather its challenge. As Schutz
championed: at the end of the day, all we
have is communication between sub­
jects, and thus it is within and upon the
nuances of communication where we
must calibrate our understandings of
subjectivity.
In the spirit of Schutz, to question sub­
jectivity is thus to commit oneself to a
research methodology that puts commu­
nication – real, dialogic communication
– front and centre. What subjectivity is to
be found through textual analysis (a
method which Nigam relies upon heavily)
is but subjectivity’s trace – shrouded in
mediations knowable and unknowable.
This is one of the principle reasons why
the project of writing subaltern histories
has proven such a difficult one. Question­
ing the subjectivity of today’s “little
Economic and Political Weekly  October 20, 2007
selves” is, however, a different project,
for they are, of course, among us. In ven­
turing questions of their subjectivity, it is
incumbent upon the researcher to pursue
phenomenologically attuned methodo­
logies – something along the lines of, say,
ethnography or psychology. Both of these
methodologies are capable of generating
the intimate experience-based data that
the question of subjectivity demands. Let
us remember that, his political ambitions
aside, it was Fanon’s evidence – often
gut-wrenching testimonials of his own
confrontations with racism – that made
his self-proclaimed “psychoexistential­
ism” one of the most riveting analyses of
postcolonial subjectivity to date.
Unlike Fanon, Nigam’s analysis oper­
ates at a remove from the people in ques­
tion. In his pursuit of postcolonial subjec­
tivity, we are often left to rely upon
scholarly readings of scholarly texts as
evidence. His commentaries on minority
communities are cases-in-point. In his
work on the emergence of a collective
Muslim identity, Nigam offers fascinating
readings of significant 19th and early 20th
century Muslim treatises, to which he
supplements relevant historical anec­
dotes. On dalits, he again focuses pri­
marily on political treatises to argue that
the dalit political critique “presents a
challenge to the central diremption insti­
tuted by modernity, that between the sub­
ject and object” (p 223), and “represents
in its very existence, the problematic
‘third term’ that continuously challenges
the common sense of the secular modern”
(p 222). Nigam’s acknowledgment of the
experience-centred qualities of dalit poli­
tics is a commendable phenomenological
gesture, yet the analysis fails to overcome
the mediation of its textual sources.
Though Nigam acknowledges that internal
politics of representation undoubtedly at­
tended the social production of these texts,
anything like a subaltern voice within the
groups under study remains silent.
In Chapter 6, ‘Secularism the Marxist
Way: ‘High’ Theory and ‘Low’ Practice’,
Nigam makes his first and only ethno­
graphic turn. Through interviews with
Marxist political workers of West Bengal,
Nigam develops his idea of the “bilingual
activist”, who mediates the world of lib­
eral democracy and that of “mass man”.
For Nigam, political society (as it has
been conceptualised in recent writings by
Partha Chatterjee) entails a necessary
translation between these worlds – hence,
the “bilingual activist”. This chapter then
charts an intriguing entry into the social
ecology of political society. However, the
inquiry itself proves somewhat hamstrung
by its fundamental premise. Why, it may
be asked, must the common man be rele­
gated to some figurative, foreign-tongued,
sub-world? Does s/he not possess the
power of negotiation through articula­
tion? Moreover, does a relegation of this
sort not automatically eliminate a primary
avenue into the myriad experiences of
poli­tical modernity – particular strains of
which we have seen coalesce and morph
into highly volatile forms of identity poli­
tics? It is true that Nigam’s book moves
toward a promising – and indeed, timely
– questioning of subjectivity and the con­
ditions of postcolonial governance. But
with the lack of communication with the
actual “mass men” into which he theorises
a so-called postcolonial subjectivity, the
sentience of the common man remains a
methodological hinterland, acknow­ledged
yet largely unexplored.
For its ambitious, incisive analysis of
the debates over secular-nationalism,
Nigam’s work should hold a central place
in any inquiry of secular-nationalism.
Strangely enough though, as a highly the­
oretical exercise, in its strength Nigam’s
book is metonymic of a yawning deficien­
cy in postcolonial theory of India to date
– perhaps, too of postcolonial theory at
large. It is at once a facet of postcolonial
theory’s methodological imbalance with
regards to subjectivity and a testament to
this body of scholarship’s intellectual
savvy and sophistication. Crucial ques­
tions are raised in the course of this book,
which can and must be grappled with, not
only in contemporary India, but also be­
yond, where other countries grapple with
old and new nationalist ideologies. The
Insurrection of the Little Selves deserves
high praise for what it is: a cutting analy­
sis of an ideology that continues to churn
the cauldron of political society in con­
temporary India and the inkwells of its
commentators. As for whether there exists
postcolonial subjectivity, perhaps, in this
book’s very strength, we may find ex­
posed a greater weakness, which calls for
a critical re-evaluation of the means
through which postcolonial theory is pur­
suing the answers to this question. And, if
through a more sensitive methodological
approach, we are to learn that the question
itself is inappropriately constituted, then
so it shall be communicated. EPW
Email: ctm22@cornell.edu
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