Subaltern Studies as a History of Social Movements in India

Abstract

While there is a thriving sociological and historical literature on social movements in post-colonial India, popular mobilisations of the colonial period are rarely addressed in terms of social movements. But the historical record is replete with instances of countless mobilisations seeking change against the state and other forms of authority in colonial society. This essay analyses a select group of works by the historical collective, Subaltern Studies, with the explicit goal of seeing these works as histories of social movements in colonial India. It also argues that one of the lasting legacies of the collective's writings was to present us with a paradigm, not unchallenged, of the revolutionary subject of such movements. By focusing in particular on Ranajit Guha's early writings, I present a reading of the colonial Indian peasant as this paradigmatic rebel subject.