A Biography of the Nation

Abstract

As the previous survey of Indian historiography demonstrates, India’s status as a nation has been controversial. Imperialist discourse at first denied it and then later claimed that nation building had always been the aim of British colonisation.1 Nationalist historiography argues that Indian nationalism and Indian nationalist discourse shaped the idea of India as a nation in opposition to colonialism.2 In the 1970s, when Rushdie was writing Midnight’s Children, the idea of India as a nation again began to be interrogated in Indian historiography. Previously, nationalist historiography had been dominant and decried as neo-imperialist anyone who doubted the existence of a genuine Indian nationalism and its success in producing a real nation.3 In the late 1970s, however, Indian historiography underwent crucial changes. Nationalist historiography’s emphasis on the role of the nationalist elite was increasingly disputed, as was its conception of the nation. The Subaltern Studies group initiated a radical re-writing of Indian history with an emphasis on ‘history from below’. Chaturvedi describes how Subaltern Studies were conceived in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s dictatorial Emergency rule of 1975–77: ‘At its origins, the project, while reflecting the “disillusionment” of the 1970s, was meant to explore the relationship between revolutionary theory and mass struggle in India’ (Chaturvedi 2000: x).