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7/21/2019 Subaltern Consciousness and Historiography of 1857
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Subaltern Consciousness and Historiography of Indian Rebellion of 1857Author(s): Darshan PerusekSource: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 28, No. 37 (Sep. 11, 1993), pp. 1931-1936Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4400141Accessed: 06-04-2015 19:52 UTC
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7/21/2019 Subaltern Consciousness and Historiography of 1857
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Subaltern
onsciousness
n d i s
toriography
o
n d i a n
ebellion
o
8 5 7
Darmhan
Perusek
The subaltern historians'
rewriting
of
history has
twvoobjectives: (1) the dismantling of elitist
historiography
by decoding biases and valuejudgments in records, testimonies, and narrativesof the ruling-classes;
and
(2)
the
restoration
to subaltern
groups
of
their
'agency' their
role in history as 'subjects'
with an ideology and a political
agenda of
their own. While
the
first objective
has
yielded
some
interesting
and important insights, the second
has led
to results
which have
been, at best, problemati;
and, at worst, tediously neo-antiquarian
and remarkably
unremarkable
in their
banality. These problems derive
from the cantradictions
and confusions inherent in the
very concept of subaltetnity
as a socio/political category.
MY
interest
in
.jhe
1857 rebellion is more
than academic. It has partly
to do
with
the-story
of how my great-grandfather
Baba
Karak
Singh
was
awarded a
'jagir'
(an estae and its revenues) by the British
for
'loyalty',
n the
midst
of a
'contagion'
of betrayal and treachery by mutinous
-sepoys (soldiers)
and disaffected
landlords, magnates
and
peasants.
Faithful
to his
masters,
the
old
man,
so
the family legend goes,
rode
like the
wind
on a
dark and moonless
night
to
bring
to
the officer
in
charge details
of the secret
military plans
of
the
rebels.
My great-
grandfather's name does
not appear
in
any
official
roll-call
of heroes
or
villains,
pre-independenceor post-independence;
he was too minor
a
figure,
too insigni-
ficant to
be
deserving
of
such notice
by
history. But he was remembered very well
by
his children and their
children
for
the
ill-gotten land that he left them, which
grewsugarcane hat sharecroppersplanted
and harvested
and
paid
one-third as
revenue to him, and the
freshness and
sweetness
of which
my
mother could
still
taste
in
her
mouth
years
later when
she
spoke
of BabaKarak
Singh
and his
family
jagir.
So much for
innocence.
But
I
tell
this
story
less
as
a
confession
of
complicity by
inheritance
than as an
explanation
of the
initial
enthusiasm with
which I read in the early 80s the first
essays
in
Indian social history by
a
group
of
post-independence
historians in
Subaltern Studies Writings on South
Asian History and Society,
the first
volume of which appeared n 1982 under
the
general editorship
of
Ranajit
Guha of
the Research
lnstitut;
of
Pacific Studies
at
the
Australian National
University,
Canberra.
"The
historiography
of
Indian
nationalism".
Guha stated
in
the first
essay
in
the
volume,
"has for
a
long time
been dominated by
elitism-colonialist
-elitism
and
bourgeois-nationalist
elitism"
['Historiography
bf
Colonial India',
Subaltern Studies,
Vol
1, p
I
]-an
elitism
which saw the making of the Indian
nation, predominantly,as the
achievement
of ruling
class ideas, institutions,
and
personalities.
What is
excluded or, if present,
marginalised,
n these narratives,he charg-
ed, was the 'politics of the people' which,
in his view,
was autonomous and existed
parallel to the domain of elite politics
throughout
the colonial
period.
This
was
politics "in which the principal
actors were
not the dominant groups of
the indi-
genous society or the colonial
authorities
but
the 'subaltern' lasses
and
groups
con-
stituting
the mass of the
labouring
population and
the intermediate strata
in
town
and
country"[p 4].
To write
history from the subaltern
point of view, as Guha makesclear later
in
this essay,
is at once
to declare
an 'in-
terest' that -is,
to
confess to
the 'con-
tamination'
of subjectivity n an enterprise
which makes
a point of defining itself in
termsof its disinterestednessand neutrali-
ty
vis-a-vis the 'raw material' of history
(historicalrecords,
eyewitness'reports, en-
sus
data, etc).
It
is,
in
other words,
to
make
clear
the
historians'
positionality
with regard to
the structures of power as
they
obtain
within
a given social forma-
tion.
Thus,
Guha says without equivo-
cation that
"the
dominant groups
will
receive
n
these
volumes the
consideration
they deserve
without, however, being
endowed wit
h
the
spurious
primacy
assigned
to them by the long-standing
tradition of elitism in South Asian
studies" [Preface, Selected Subaltern
Studies, p 35, Italics added].
Guha's characterisation
of the primacy
attached to dominant groups by
tradi-
tional
ruling class
historiography
as
'spurious' is,
of course, provocative and
intended to be so. As Edward
Said observ-
ed,
"Theirs [the
subaltern
historians']
is
no
history
of ideas,
no
calmly Olympian
narrativeof events,
no
disengaged objec-
tive recital of facts. It is rather
sharply
contestary,
an attempt
to
wrest
control of
the
past
from its
scribes
and
curators
in
the
present,
since...much
of
the
past
con-
tinues
in
the
present" [Foreword to
Selected
Subaltern Studies,
p
viii].
This
was heady
stuff, really.
One
knew
that
history
was
biased,
that there was
no
such
things
as 'value-free', 'objective'
history,
but
the rules of the
game,
so
far
as
one knew it, involved
revealing
he
bias
in other historians' work
and
hiding your
own as
cleverly
as possible.
To
confess
your own
bias? This
was unheardof
and
audacious
and honest.
And
this
business
of "wresting
the
past
from its scribes
and
curators
n the
present"
this
was no mere
fighting the
windmills
either,
for one had
the
vague suspicion
that notwithstanding
'full-blooded'
nationalist
reconstructions
of
the
past,
colonialist historiography
on-
tinued
to survive,
albeit
in more
decorous
and subdued
forms,
in the corridors
of
Oxbridge.
In
fact, my
reading
of
Eric
Stokes's
The
Peasant
and
the
Raj
and
The
Peasant
Armed,
necessary and
il-
luminatingreadings, or anyscholar of the
period,
later
proved
that such
forebodings
were no chimera
of my
mind.
This explicitly
combative
stance of
the
new historians
was in itself a promise
of
good
things to come.
What seemed
equal-
ly promising
was
a serious corrective,
by
their
insistence on the
importance
of the
cultural
dimension
of social
life, to
the
'lacks'
in the already
existing
tradition
of
'history
from
below' that
is, of
some
strands of
Marxist history.
Early Marxian
history, as
Elizabeth
Fox-Genovese
and
Eugene. D
Genovese
observe,
was com-
mitted less to recording the totality of
social life
than to the
classes that
contend-
ed
for
state power,
and its
major contribu-
tions to history
lay in
its documentation
and chronicling
of
this struggle
in its
economic
and political
aspects.
Social
history,
rather than
being a
history of
social life
in
all
its multitudinous
aspects,
thus tended to
be a history of
organised
labour
or the
history of the socialist
move-
ment and,
as such, "it could,
by its
manifestation
of names, dates,
and
generously
sprinkled
initials,
rival a
history of
monarchs or
of bourgeois
political parties".They conclude correctly
Economic
and
Political
Weekly
September
11
1993
1931
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7/21/2019 Subaltern Consciousness and Historiography of 1857
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that a
socialist
sensibility,
of itself, "could
not suffice
to. break through
the metho-
dological
hegemony
of
accepted
historical
practice,'
['The
Political
Crisis of Social
History'
in
Fruits
of
Merchant
Capital:
Slavery
and
BourgeoisProperty
n
the
Rise
and
Expansion
of Capitalism, p
180].
It is
this
methodological
hegemony,
insofar as it continues
to foreground
economics
and
marginalise
culture,
that
subaltern historians,
drawing upon
anthropological,
linguistic,
and
psychological
theories
and
data, appeared
to
repudiate,
not Marxism
itself.
Thus,
when
Dipesh Chakrabarty,
n his
study of
the working
conditions of
jute
workers
n
Calcutta from, 1890-1940, proposed
that
such
a
study
could not
stop
at the
purely
economic
but
"must
push
itself into
the
realm
of
working
class
culture',
he
clarified immediately
that
in
insisting
on
the
importance
of
the cultural dimension
of worlCing
lass
history,
he was
arguing
with
Marx, not against
him
['Conditions
for Knowledge of WorkingClass Condi-
tions: Employers,
Government,
and
the
Jute'
Workers of
Calcutta'
in
Subaltern
Studies
I,
1983, p
259].
So
far
so
good.
We were
going
to
witness,
it seemed, the birth
of a true
'history
from
below'
a
social
history
that
would
add
a new
dimension
to
class strug-
gle by
presenting
the
totality
of
society
in
all
its
inter-connectedness
and
density
of
emotional, psychological,
and material
lifc
At
a more immediate
and
personal
level,
I was
going
to see and understand
the
Baba
Karak
Singhs
of
1857,
those who
saw in the uprising a chance to secure a
place
for themselves
and
their
children to
come
in
the colonial
order,
as
well as
those
who, for
a
variety
of reasons, were engag-
ed
in a
mortal
struggle against
that
order,
those who,
for
instance,
William Russell,
reporter
or
7he
Times,
saw
as
he
followed
Colin
Campbell
en
route
to
Lucknow:
"Look
Look
The
woods are
alive
with
men
in
white
running
back
toward
Lucknow
See that stream of
horsemen
rushing towards the Kakraal
bridge "
and
the
faces close
up-"the
slight, tall,
dark-coloured Hindu"
with the
shattered
leg
of whom
Russell
observed
with
clinical
interest: "The blood does not show as
much on
the dark skin
as
on
the white"
[My
Indian
Mutiny Diary,
p
86].
The
crowds
and individuals that Russell
saw
were all fighting
the colonial power of the
British.Were
hey
all
fighting for
the
same
reasons?
Or
did their
struggle
encompass
a
variety
of
congruent and
conflicting
motives?
The
promise,
I
must
report with some
disappointment,
proved to be brighter
than the actual achievementsof
subaltern
historiography
demonstrate, for
reasons
whichwill be explained
n a later
section
of this
paper.
I will now
proceed
to
the
events
of
the
uprising
itself
and
the
main
contours
of
colonialist
and nationalist
ver-
sions of the
meaning of these events.
BRIEF NOrE ON THE
EVENTS
OF
THE
UPRISING
What is called the 'sepoy mutiny' by
colonialist historians and 'the first warof
independence by nationalist,brokeout on
May 10, 1857,
in
Meerut,
a
British can-
tonment about
36 miles
north-east
of
Delhi,
after
a
series of
telling incidents
in
Dum
Dum,
near
Calcutta,
resulting
from
rumours
about
cartridges
soaked in cow
and
pork
fat.
The
most dramatic of such
incidents occurred
on
Sunday,
March
29,
when General
Hearsey,
the
offrcer com-
manding the presidency
division,
was in-
formed by
a
young lieutenantabout a riot
in
the
Indian
lines.
The cause
of
the
disturbance was
Mangal Pandey,
a
sepoy,
who seemed to be under the
influence of
some intoxicatingdrug and was "rampag-
ing about with a loaded
musket"'
houting
to his
fellow
sepoys:
"Come
out,
you
bain-
chutes,
the
Europeans
are here
Why
aren't
you getting ready? It's
for
our
religion From
biting these cartridges wv
shall
become infidels. Get
ready
Turnout
all
of
you You
have incited
me to do this
and now
you bainchutes, you will not
follow
me "
[cited
n
Christopher
Hibbert,
The Great
Mutiny, p 68].
Mangal Pandey
was
restrained and
overpowered
with
the
help of a Muslim
sepoy,
Shaikh
Paltu, tried,
and
sentenced
to death.
When asked
to
explain his con-
duct,
he
readily
admitted he
had
been
tak-
ing
bhang
(hashish)
and
opium
of
lateb
but
refused to
give
the
names
of
any per-
sons who had
'incited'
him to
mutiny:
"Of
my
own free
will".
he
answeredwhen
ask-
ed who
had made him do
what
he had
done. Later,during
the
course of the
war,
all
rebels
were called
'pandys
after
Mangal Pandey.
Thus
Russell
makes
the
following
observations
in
My Indian
Mutiny
Diary
"I
had a canter
about Pan-
dy's deserted
trenches"
[p
861
and "In all
my
wanderings today
I
saw only three or
four
'pandies'
in
extremis"
[p
87].
What happened in Meerut on the day
before the
sepoys
mutinied
also
had to do
with greased
cartridges and the fear of
pollution and loss of
religion.
A
parade
of the 3rd
Native
Light Cavalry
had been
ordered for the
morning
of
the
6th
of
May.
When
cartridges
were
passed
out,
86
of
the
sepoys
refused
to
accept them,
despite persuasion
or
threats
by
the
brigadier.
A
court
of
inquiry was im-
mediately held;
the 86
men
were
tried,
condemned,
and
sentenced
to 10
years
m-
prisonment with
hard labour.
The
sentences were read out on the
parade
ground
before an
assembly of
1,700
British
troops, with
guns and rifles load-
ed, and
a smaller
number of
Indian
troops. They were
stripped off
their
uniforms,
their boots
were removed,
and
their
ankles shackled.
The mutiny broke
out
the
following
evening, with one
group
of
sepoys free-
ing the 86
convicted men from the new
gaol, and another
opening the doors of
the old gaol to
let out 800 prisoners. The
sepoys
were joined by civilians
and, later,
by men
from
surrounding villages,
armed
with
whatever
weapons they could
lay
their
hands on.
According to later British
accounts, the
town was
soon
in
flames,
sepoys and
civilians
looted stores
and
smashed the
contents
of
wineshops. By
next
morning, May
11, about 50
British
men, women, and
children were
dead,
and
the
mutinous
troops
had
marched
into
Delhi, where
they presented
themselves
before Bahadur
Shah,
the
82-year
old
Moghul king, descendant of the
power-
ful Moghul dynasty and now pensioner
of
the
British,
and
asked him to
assume
leadership of the
rebellion.
Thus
began
the
rebellion
which
was to
spread
across all the
major
stations,
n
the
north-western
provinces
and in
Oudh
and
beyond,
was joined by
civilians
peasants),
and
lasted well into
November 1859.
Within a
month of the
Meerutmutiny,
he
British held
only
the fort at
Agra,
a
few
entrenchmentsat
Kanpur,
and
the
residen-
cy
at Lucknow. Lord
Canning,
governor-
general, was to write on June
19,
1857:"In
Rohilcund
and
the
Doab
from
Delhi to
Cawnpore and Allahabad the country is
not
only
in
rebellion
against us,
but
is
utterly
lawless.
Every
man's
hand
is
against
his
neighbour's,
and
nothing
but
our
presence here
in
force
and the
patient
hunting
out
and
exemplarypunishmentof
every
mutineer and rebel
will
restorecom-
plete
order"
[cited
in Thomas
Metcalfe,
The
Aftermath
of
Revolt:India
1857-1870,
p
49].
For
both colonialist
and nationalist
historians
of
the
rebellion,
the
primary
material
for
reconstruction of
the
events
of
the rebellion
and
its
meaning
is
the
body
of
memoirs,
journals,
reminiscences,
histories, and personal narratives that
began
to
make their
appearance
even
before
the rebellion
was
defeated,
and
which swelled
into a veritable
flood dur-
ing the
succeeding decades of
the
19th
century.
The entire
corpus
of
this
primary
material is
the work of
British.
ad-
ministrators, military
staff and officers,
soldiers, reporters,
and civilians who
were
in
some
way
connected
with
or
actually
participated
n
the
war.
Only
one
conten-
porary
account
by
an Indian
exists,
that
by
Sir
Sayyid
Ahmed Khan in his 'An
Essay on the Causes
of the Indian
Revolt'
1932
Economic
and
Political
Weekly
September 11,
1993
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[1860].
The
point of view
of
the rebels
sur-
vives
only in
the correspondence
by
rebel
leaders
with representatives
of the
col-
onial
state [e g,
Nana
Saheb's
Ishiahar
to
the Queen
of England,
April
26,
1859]
or
in
proclamations
addressed
by
rebel
leaders
to their
followers
(e,g,
the
1857
proclamation
of Khan
Bahadur
Khan,
nawab
of Bareilly, suggesting
terms
on
which Hindus and Muslims could recon-
cile
their differences
and combine
to
over-
throw
the British).
The thousands
of
rebel
sepoys
and
peasants
(who
often
came
from
the same villages
or even the
same
families)
are- present
in the
primary
material
only by
their
total and
complete
silence.
COLONIALIST
AND
NATIONALIST
HISTORIOGRAPH
Y
Interpretation,
Frederic
Jameson
says,
can
be construed
as an essentially
al-
legorical
act,
which
consists
in re-writing
a given text in terms of.a particular inter-
pretive
"master-
code";
furthermore,
his
interpretation
is not
"anisolated
act,
but
takes place
within
a Homeric
battlefield,
on which
a host
of interpretive
ptions
are
either.
openly
or
implicitly
in conflict"
[Jameson,
'Preface,
in The
Political
Un-
conscious,
pp
10,
13].
The
voice of
the
Indian
rebels
being
silent
in the 1857
uprising,
the ideological
battlefield
was
not,
in
any
sense
of the
term,
a battlefield
at all
but an
uncontested
territory
in
-which
the
allegories
of the
dominant
group
could
have
free and
wide-ranging
play. Thus George Trevelyan, on of the
governor
of Madras,
is
transported,
literally,
back
to a
Homeric
battlefield
in
the
following:
"There
s much
in common
between
Leonidas dressing
his
hair before
he went
to
his last
fight,
and Colvin
laughing
over
his rice
and
salt
while
bullets pattered
on the
wall
like hail.
As
in the
days
of old
Homer,
cowards
gain
neither
honour
nor
safety"
[cited
in S B
Chaudhari,
Exglish
Historical Writings,
p
265].
And
G
B Malleson,
the
anonymous
author
of The
Mutiny
of the
Bengal
Army
and later,
with
Kaye,
of The
Indian
Mutiny
of
1857 [1891],
incor-
porates
the
victory
of
the
British in the
war
into the
larger
history
of
British
vic-
tories:
"the spirit
that
had
animated
.Raleigh,
that
had
inspired
Drake,
that had
given
invincible
force
to the
soldiers
of
Cromwell,
that
had dealt
the
first blow
to
the conqueror
of Europe,
lived
in these
men.
It was
that
spirit
born
of freedom
which
filled their
hearts
with
the convic-
tion
that being
Englishmen,
they
are
bound
to
conquer"
[cited
in S B
Chaudhari,
p 269].
All
of this leads
to
the
final,
indisputablemeanin~g
f the
con-
flict,
as allegorised
by an
American
mis-
sionary
R
B Minturn
in From
New
York
to Delhi,
by wav
of
Rio De
Janeiro,
Australia,
and
China,
1858:
"Asiatic
courage
is
of one
kind, European
of
another,
and the former
bow before
the
latter...lf
one
thing
has
been
demonstrated
by the
recent
mutiny,
t is the
indescribable
moral
nferiority
of the
Asiatic
races"'
And
then,
like Trevelyan,
Minturn
too
is
transported, not to the Homeric bat-
tlefield,
but
into a
kind
of
ecstasy
of
gratitude:
"May
Heaven
bless
the
British
Nation
May
God savethe
British
Queen
Ah Yes
And let every
lover of
liberty
and
civilisation...
in
our
own happy
American
say,
from the depths
of
his
heart,
Amen "
[cited
in S
B
Chaudhari, p
263].
When
the
battle
was joined
by Indian
nationalists,
the
meaning
of the
conflict
underwent
a
radical change.
It
was
now
symbolic
of the
love of liberty
and
the
resentment
against
oppression
that burn-
ed
in the heart
of
every
Indian.
In the
centennial
publication,
Rebellion:
1857,
P C Gupta,authorof Nana Sahib and the
Rising at
Cawnpore,
1963,
writes
that
although
references
to
the
uprising
in
Hindi
literature
were few,
references
o
the
economic
plunder
and exploitation
were
many.
One becomes
aware,
he says,
in
these writings
of
a. constant
feeling
of
humiliation
and
misery
seeping
through
all modern
Hindi
literature,
a "feeling
of
sorrow
that
this great
land
has been
humbledand
laid
waste
by the
foreigner".
It is a feeling
that
comes
through,
as
well,
in
the folk
tradition,
witness the follow-
ing
Bhojpuri
song:
The barkof the foreigner s now reeling
The country
is
sunk
in
poverty;
In
midstream
his bark
reels.
Famine
and disease
increase
n the land,
The clouds
of
trouble rumble;
In the river
of sorrow
hereare
fathomless
waters,
The
winds
of
tyranny
blow fiercely
across
the land.
The ruler-pilot
s drunken-mad;
We
appealto
him, but
he
says not a
word.
0
foreigner,
your
boat
is doomed;
Your funeral procession
begins
on
the
river
[from
Krishna
Deo Upadhyaya
Bhojpuri
Gram-geet, pp 383-84 in Rebellion: 1857,
p
233].
Both versions
of
the uprising
follow,
broadly speaking,
the same
narrativepat-
tern:
causes of
the
uprising,
the events of
the
uprising
itself,
and the aftermath
of
the
uprising.
Thus John Williams Kaye's
History of
the Sepoy
War 3
vols), 1867,
a source book
for all subsequent
histories
of the
war,
offers
a detailed
account
of
all the
mutinies which preceded
1857,
describes
the heavy-handed
manner
in
which the
government
tampered
with
the
pay
of the sepoys,
criticises
Dalhousie's
annexation
of
Awadh
and his alienation
of the Indian
elite groups,
and
points
to
economic
factors
like
over-assessment
of
land revenue
and resumption
of old
hereditary
grants
as
causes
of the revolt.
Among
the cultural
factors,
he lists
as a
prime
reason
the
misguided
policy,
resulting
from
a well-intentioned
desire
to
disseminate
Christian
enlightenment
in a
superstitious
and decadent
society,
of
tampering
with
native
customs
oand
'superstitions'.
In the
same
manner,
the
Indian
historian
R
C Majumdar's,
The
Sepoy
Mutiny
and
the
Revolt
of 1857
[1957], after
a chapter
entitled
'Expansion
of
British
Dominions'.
lists like
causes
of
the uprising:
ruin
of trade
and industry,
oppressive
agrarian
policy,
discontent
due
to social and
religious
causes,
discontent
due
to the administrative
system,
and
finally,discontent
and
disaffection
among
the sepoys.
With some
differences
in em-
phasis,
the causes
of the revolt
n both
ver-
sions cover
the same territory,
the col-
onialist being more sensitive to British
sensibilities
and constraints,
the
na-
tionalist
more
understanding
of the rebels'
frustration
and anger.
The aftermath
of
the revolt shows
more
striking
divergences,
with the colonialist
version
generally
emphasising
the
prevalence
among the
British of reason
and discipline
after
the
'excesses' of
'naturalpassions'
of
revenge
and demands
of
'blood
for blood',
and
the nationalist
detailing
the excesses
of the British
themselves.
Thus Malleson
in
his
The
Indian
Mutiny of
1857, concludes
his nar-
rative with the following paragraph
intended
to "disabuse
the
minds
of those
who may
have
been
influenced
by
rumours current
at
the period
as
to the
nature of the
retaliation
dealt
out to
the
rebels by the
British soldiers
in the
hour
of their triumph":
I haveexamined ll those
rumours-I
have
searched ut
the details
attending
he stor-
ming
of Delhi,
of Lakhnao,
and
of
Jhansi-and
I can emphatically
declare
that,
not
only
was the retaliation
not ex-
cessive,
it did not exceed
the
bounds
necessary
o ensure the safety
of the con-
querors.
Unfortunately
war is
war.
It
is
meeting n contact of two bodies of men
exasperated
gainst
each other,
alike-con-
vinced
that victory
can only
be gained
by
the destruction
of
the opponent.
Under
such circumstances
t
is
impossible
o
give
quarter...beyond
hedeaths
he inflicted
n
fair
fight,
the
Britishsoldier
perpetrated
no unnecessary
slaughter...
IPP
405-06].
Nationalist
historians tend.
to take a
somewhat
more
lingering
and bitter
look
at what
appeared
o
have
been,
from
most;
accounts,
a
somewhat
more
bloody
affair
than
Malleson's
'fair fight' would
have
it.
Thus R C Majumdar,
whose
history is,
in
Economic
and
Political Weekly September
11,
1993
1933
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fact,
far
from a
celebration
of
the
rebellion as
the
'first
war of
Indian in-
dependence',
describes
in
detail,
drawing
upon British
accounts,
the
wholesale
massacres
that followed
each
successive
British
campaign in
Allahabad,
Peshawar,
Cawnpore,
Lucknow,
Delhi,
Jhansi,
Ujnalla,
and
Gwalior.
He
quotes,
for ex-
ample,
from Lt
Col
T
Rice
Holmes',
A
history of the Indian Mutiny, and of the
disturbances which
accompanied it
among the civil
population,
1883:
ac-
counts
of
trials in
Delhi
by
the
military
court:
Nativeswere
brought
n
batches
o
be tried
by a
Military
Commission,
or
by
Special
Commissioners,
each
one of
whom
had
been
nvested
by
the
supreme
Government
with
full
powers
of life
and
death.
These
judges
were in
no
mood to show
mercy.
Almost
all
who were
ried
were
condemn-
ed,
and
almost all
who were
condemned
were
sentenced
to
death. A
four-foot
square gallows was
erected
in
a con-
spicuousplace in the city and five or six
culprits
were
hanged
every
day.Englishof-
ftcers
used
to
sit
by,
puffing
at
their
cigars,
and
look on
at the
convulsive
truggles
of
the
victims
[cited
in
Majumdar,p
214].
And
from
Lt Vivian
Majendie's
Up
among
the
Pandies
or, a Years
Service in
India;
1859:
At
the
time
of the
captureof
Lucknow-a
season
of
indiscriminate
massacre-such
distinction
[between
rebel and
innocent]
was not
made, and
the
unfortunate
who
fell
into the
hands of
our
troops
was
made
short
work
of-sepoy or
Oude
villager
t
matterednot,-
no
questions
were
asked;
his skin was black, and did not that suf-
fice? A
piece of
rope
and the
branchof
a
tree,
or a
rifle
bullet
through
his brain
soon
terminated
he poor
devil's
existence
[cited
in
Majumdar,p
2151.
The
last
words
in
any
battle,
however,
belong to
the
victorious, and in
this in-
stance
they come
from
Kayes
summation
of
the
meaning
of
1857:
The
story
of
the Indian
Rebellion
f 1857
is
perhapsthe
most
single
illustrationof
our
great
national
character
ever
yet
recorded n
the
annals
of our
country.
It
was
the
vehement
self-assertion of
thie
Englishman hat produced hisconflagra-
tion; it
was
the
same
vehement self-
assertion that
enabled
him,
by
God's
blessings,
o
trample t
out. It
was a
noble
egoism,
mighty,alike
n
doingand in
suf-
fering...(pp
89-90).
After
such
resounding
triumphalism,
the
words
of P
C
Joshi,
editor of
the
1857
centennial
volume,
make for
poor con-
solation:
"The 1857
heritage
played a
big
part
in
giving
a
particular
orientation
to
Indian
national
literature
in
our
various
languages.
It
has
supplied
Indian
writers
with
dramatic
incidents
of
suffering,
struggle,
and
sacrifice,
and
noble
dramnatic
themes"
[Rebellion,
1857,
p vii].
HOW
THE
PASF
CONTINUES N
THE
PRESENT,
COLONIAL
STYLE
Eric
Stokes's
The
Peasant
Armed
[1985]
is a
series of
essays
on
the
magnitude and
natureof civil
rebellion-the
participation
of
peasants,
that is-in
the
1857
revolt.
Stokes,
whose
life-long
professional in-
terest and research in Indian
agrarian
society has
influenced
a
whole
generation
of
Indian
and
British
historians,
does
not
discount
the
place of
emotion in
historical
research.In
fact,
although
observing with
a
degree of
sadness, the
excess
of
national
resentment
which
resulted,
after in-
dependence,
in
the
replacement
by Tantia
Topi's
effigy
of
Marochettis
weeping
angel
over
the well
down
which
"Nana's
minions
had
cast
the
butchered
remains of
some
200
British
women
and
children"(p
2), he
nevertheless
maintains
that
it is
almost a
pre-condition
of
the
historian's
activity
that the past should remain charged with
emotion.
However,
he
warns
"such
emo-
tion
almost
imprisons him
[the
historian]
within
the
framework
of
its
own
lines of
interpretation"
p 4). The
way out
of this
prison
is
through
a
calm,
judicious,
and
objective
evaluationof
empirical
evidence,
to
the
gathering of
which
Stokes
devoted
his
entire
career as
a
historian.
He
sometimes
complained,
as his
editor
C A
Bayly
reports,
"that he
was
'ploughing a
lonely furrow'
in
wrestling
with
the
com-
plexities of
Indian
tenurial
forms..."
(p.
226), but
wrestle
he
did,
and
the
evidence that he has brought to bear on
his
central
thesis
that
the
complexity
and
variability
of
social
structures
and
rela-
tions in
Indian
rural
society
in
1857
do not
allow
simple
answers,
is
formidable.
But
is
empirical
evidence,
n
fact, a
way
out of
the
prison of
emotion?
It
would
seem
not.
Three
short
passages,
all
from
the
first
chapter of
Stokes'
The
Peasant
Armed,
illustrate the
point.
This
chapter,
along
with
the
second,
was
the
last
to be
written,
according
to
Bayly.
In
contrastto
the
subsequent
chapters,
which are
analytic and
rather
dry,
these two
chapteis
are
narrative n
form
and
charged
with an
emotion that belie the
'objective
scholar's
declared
neutrality.
Here, in
Bayly's
words,
"the
human
drama
and
the
mythology of
the
revolt,
carefully
excluded
from
the
chapters
of
secial
history,
reappear
with
drive
and
conviction"
[The
Peasant
Armed,
p
241J.
They
certainly
do.
Here's
how
the
first
lines
of
Chapter
1,
'The
Military
Dimen-
sion:
British
Strategy
and
Tactics',
read:
On
Sunday-,
10
May
1857,
in
that
brief
hour
befor
darkness,
when
the
descen-
ding
fireball
of
thesun
ignites
the
Indian
sky in
the
bloody
hues
of
sunset,
men
of
the
20th
and
11th
Bengal
Native
Infantry
broke
nto
mutinyat
the
great
military
ta-
tion
of
Meerut.
By
the
time
the
European
troops...
(p
17).
The
narrative
thus
begins,
not
with
an
explanatory
analysis
of
events
immediate-
ly
preceding
the
outbreak,
but
with
the
outbreak
itself,
which
erupts, in
the
absence
of
any
background
information,
with the force of a natural cataclysm. I
move
now
to
the next
passage
on
the
same
page
where, after
talking
about
how
the
'mob'
quickly, as
soon
as
the
sepoys
had
broken
through
the
'restraints
of
discipline',
began
'plundering
and
burn-
ing
the
European
bungalows
and
murder-
ing
their
inhabitants'
and,
because
of
the
inability of
the
European
force
to
pursue
the
mutineers
(since
they
had
to
look
after
the
safety
of
the
European
families)
were
able
to
enter
Delhi
and
suborn
the
old
emperor
Bahadur
Shah
to
their
side,
Stokes
concludes:
Thus within the space of twenty-four
hours,
what
began
as
merely
he
latest
and
ugliest
of
a
long
series of
mutinous in-
cidents in
the
Bengal
army had
swelled
monstrously
into
full-scale
political
rebellion.
Delhi, the
capital
of
the
ancien
regime, had
assumed
the
leadership
of
a
movement
o li
berate ndia
from
the
white
man's
yoke
(pp
18-19).
He
does
not
conclude,
exactly,
because
the
next
sentence
points to
what
could
have
been
had
the
British, even at
this
point,
been
in
a
position to
act
faster:
Even
then
the
rebellioncould
have been
scotched
swiftly as a
snake or
at
least
drivenback into its hole. But it was not
until 8
June
that
the
British
were
able
to
get a
force
behind
the
walls
of
Delhi.
The
interval
was
deadly
(p
19).
To
interpret,
as
Jameson
points
out, it
"to
restructure
the
problematics of
ideology, of
the
unconscious
and
desire,
of
representation,
of
history,
and
of a
cultural
production, around
the
all-
informing
process of
narrative...
which
s]
the
central
function
or
instance of
the
human
mind"
[Political
Unconscious,
p
131.
What
we
have in
these
opening
passages is
the
story
of
"what
happened"
and an allegory of "what could have
been". It
is a
story that
could
be
inter-
preted
as
a
dispassionate
representation
f
the
sequence of
events
strung
together
with
"By
the
time..."
"As
soon
as...:'
"by
ten
o'clock...:'
etc, were it
not
for
the in-
terpretive
words
and
images that
crowd
their
way
into
the
discourse.
Even
the first
paragraph, which
may
be
slided
over as
a
theatrical
piece of
rhetoric,4understan-
dable in
a
scholar
who,
in
his
own
words,
for so
long
'ploughed
a
lonely
furrow,
and,
as
a
professional
historian, had to
follow
the
decorum
of
professional
prose
(academic
drone)-even
the
first
1934
Economic
and
Political
Weekly
September
11,
1993
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paragraph
s
saturated
with
images which
set
the stage
for the events
to
follow
("descending
fireball".
"bloody hues")
and define
the character
of the
rebels and
the rebellion
("broke"
into
mutiny,
like
waters crashing through a dam, and
"fled"' like thieves
in the
night).
The
breaking waters
engulf all,
the
thieves
"murder"
and
"plunder"
and the flood
then swells "monstrously" into full-scale
"political
rebellion"
to throw
off,
under
an old king's impotent
leadership,
the
"white man's yoke'
(faint sneer?). Final-
ly (frustrated desire?)
the
"what
could
have been of
history"
if the
"snake"
could
have
been
swiftly
"scotched'
or
(damn it )
"at
least
driven
back
into its
hole". So
much for
neutrality.
THE
SUBALTERN
NTERVENTION
The subalternhistorians'
re-writing
of
history
has two
objectives: (1)
The
dis-
mantling
of
elitist historiography by
decoding biases and value judgments in
records, estimonies,
and
narratives
of the
ruling-classes; (2)
The
restoration
to
subaltern
groups
of their
'agency',
their
role
in
history
as
'subjects',
with
an
ideology
and a
political agenda
of
their
own.
The
first
objective
has
yielded
some
interesting
and
important insights as,
for
exampmle
n Guha's
readings
of the
official
recordsof the Barasatpeasant uprising of
1831, the Santhal
(tribal)
revolt of
1855,
and the rebeilion
of
1857
in 'The
Prose
of
Counter-Insurgency'
Subaltern
Studies
11, pp 140,
19831.
The
second
objective
has, on the positive
side, opened up a v'ast
area of research
and
study generally
regarded by historians
as the
proper
sphereof anthropologists, ethnographers,
and
psychologists,
e
g,
the
significance
of
the
symbolic aspects
of
ritual,
of
the
in-
stitutionalcodification
of
religious beliefs,
of
the natureof premodern
forms
of
con-s
munication, of the
density
of
everyday
material life. See,
for
example, Gyan
Pandey's analysis of the religious aspects
of
peasant
demands
in 'Peasant Revolt
and
Indian Nationalist:
The
Peasant
Movement in Awadh 1919-22'
[Subaltern
Studies
I,
pp 166-85,
19821.
But if this kind of opening up is, on
principle,desirable,
and
even necessary, ts
results, as
evidenced by the actual work
of
the subaltern group itself, have been,
at
best, problematic, at worst, tediously
neo-antiquarian' and remarkably un-
remarkable in their
banality. These pro-
blems derive from the
contradictions
and
confusions inherent
n the
very concept of
subalternity as a
socio/political category.
The
first problem
has to do with the
proposition
regarding the 'autonomous
terrain' of subaltern consciousness and
political activity. This autonomy is not
total:
as Guha
notes,
this domain
co-exists
with
that of elite groups
and, consequent-
ly,
bears its
marks. But there are,
he
in-
sists,
nonetheless
"vast areas
in the
life
and consciousness
of the people
which
were
[in
colonial India]
never integrated
into
their
[the
elite groups] hegemony"
['Historiography
of
Colonial
India',
Subaltern Studies,
Vol 1, pp
5-6]. Very
likely not,
but to make
a leap
from this
observation
to the
conclusion
that there
exists
such a
phenomenon
as 'subaltern
mentality' is surely
a new
kind of elitism,
based on discredited
and
untenable
anthropological
theory Furthermore,
t
is
not just
subaltern groups
who are
'entrap-
ped',
as our historians suggest,
in the old
culture of religious
beliefs
and customs;
the ruling
classes
in a specific conflict
have
recourse
to and deploy
beliefs and values
from
the same source.
The question
then
is,
why do the former
fail and
the latter
succeed?
Not
just
because
of the
'men-
tality'
of the poor, decidedly,
but because
of the commanding advantage of power
the dominant classes possess.
In
short,
there seems
to be greater emphasis
in
subaltern historiography
on
the limita-
tions
of the
mentality
of the poor
as a fac-
tor
in the
explanation
of
their failed
strug-
gles
than on the fact
that
they
also lack
the
instruments
of
coercion
that their
adversaries
in the
struggle
own.
The notion of
'autonomy'
furthermore,
while
being empirically
untenable,
also
leads at times
into the kind of
embarrass-
ing
difficulties Gautam
Bhadra, for
in-
stance,
has to
explain
away
when he makes
Manulla, a relatively prosperous head-
man, represent
in
the poem
Kantanama
the
culture
of the subordinate classes.
There
must have
been,
Bhadra concedes
as an
afterthought,
"important
and in-
teresting
differences between
the
thoughts
of a
poor peasant
and those of a Mandal
[headman]",
and Kantananm onsequent-
ly
cannot
be
made
to the 'thought-world'
of
the latter.
But
Bhadra
does,
nonethe-
less,
make
it
do
so, by
introducing
into the
presumably
'autonomous terrain'
of
subaltern
mentality
some elements
of elite
thought
and beliefs:
However, it seems to me that we would be
erring
in
the
opposite
direction
to
think
that there could be no
exchange
or shar-
ing
of ideals
or
ideas
between classes,
or
that
classes,
even
when
they
were
in
con-
flict,
did
not
learn from each other...
The
cognitive
view that Manulla had of the
world may easily have
been shared, though
not necessarily ^ holly, by
a poor peasant
['The Mentality
of
Subalternity',
Subaltern
Studies,
Vol
VI,
pp
89-901.
The second
and even
more
serious pro-
blem has to
do with
the
use
of the
terms
'subaltern'
nd
'elite'as descriptive
of con-
tending social
forces w hich are,
in
actuality, far more
complex
than this
sim-
ple dichotomy would
suggest.
At no
time
in any historical
conflict
have
the
material
interests of the
entire spectrum
of
the rul-
ing elite classes on
the
one
hand, and
of
the contending
classes on the
other, been
identical. Subaltern
historians
recognise
this, but
in their
actual analysis,
'subalter-
nity' as
a
theoretical concept
seems to
lend
itself
more
as a
description
of
identity
as
an oppressed group
rather
than
dif-
ferences
in
degree
in the
kind
of
oppres-
sion
suffered,
or
the
divergence
of
interest
within that group once a particularsource
of
oppression
is removed.
Gautam Bhadra once
again provides
a
telling example
in
his
'Four
Rebels of
Eighteen-Fifty-Seven'
Selected
Subaltem
Studies,
1857, pp 129-75],
the
objective
of
which essay, n the author'swords,was "to
seek
after
and
restore
the
specific subjec-
tivity of
the rebels"
(p 175).
He
begins by
pointing
out the 'curious
complicity' of
colonialist, nationalist,
and
radical
historians, including EricStokes, in deny-
ing ordinary rebels an independent role in
the rebellion
of 1857
("Eric Stokes':
Bhadra notes, "in his otherwise admirable
work on the local
background of the
popular upsurge,
has also
described
the
rural
insurgency
of 1857
as
essentially
elitist in
character,
or the
nuss of
popula-
tion
appeared
to have
played
[in
his
account]
little or no
part
or
at the
most
tamely followed
the behests
of
caste
superiors",
pp 129-30).
But who
does he
then
offer as
representative
of
'ordinary
people'?
A
wildly
eclectic
group, who
seem to have hadnothing in common with
each other
except
their
'subalternity'
in
relation
to the colonial
British:
Shah
Mal,
a
'malik'
(owner, landlord)
of a
portion
of
a
village;
Devi
Singh,
master of
14
villages; the tribal, Gonoo, an ordinary
cultivator;
and
finally,
Maulvi Ahmadul-
lah
Shah,
a member of 'a
grandee family
of
Carnatic. The rationale
for
grouping
them? Their
'ordinariness';
"It
is
the
'ordinariness'
of these rebels
which
con-
stitutes
their
distinction. Devi
Singh could
hardly
be
distinguished
rom his
followers,
Shah
Mal was a small
zamindar
among
many
and Gonoo
was a
common KoL
Even the Maulvi was
hardly
a learnedman
and
knew
only
'little Arabic
and
Persian"
(pp 174-75).
This
is
surely
naivete of
the
most
extraordinarysort. Was
Gonoo's
in-
terest
in
opposing
the
colonial
order
the
same
as
that of Devi
Singh
and
Shah Mal?
The
alien masters and the
native, as far
as
Gonoo was
concerned, extracted
revenue equally
ferociously
from
his
labour and that of his fellow
tribals, did
they
not? Bhadra does admit to
dif-
ferences in the social, economic, and
ideological background
and orientation of
his four rebels but, he asserts, "pitted as
Economic and
Political
Weekly -September 11, 1993
1935
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7/7
they were against the s..me enemy at the
same historical morient, they shared,
thanks
to
the logic of
insurrection,
some
common characteristics'
(p 174).
And
wherein lies the source of this
commonality? It lies in "their
perception
and day-to-day experience
of the
alien
state in
his
[the
rebel]
mmediate
surroun-
dings.." (p 175).
And
what, finally,
s their
histonrcalmportance?That they "asserted
themselves through
the
act
of
insurgency
and took
the initiative denied-to them
by
the
dominant
classes;
and in
doing
so
they
put
their
stamp
on the course
of the
rebellion, hereby
breaking
he
long
silence
imposed
on them
politically
and
culturally
by
the
ruling
classes"
(p 174).
Bhadra
fails
to
ask
how landlords and
proprietors
like
Devi
Singh
and
Shah
Mal,
had
they
suc-
ceeded,
would
have dealt
with
Gonoo's
in-
terests
after the
conclusion
of
the war.
If
a socialist
sensibility,
as the
Genoveses
correctly observe,
does not
in
itself
guarantee
a
break.
from
the
hegemony
of
elitist historical practices,
neither,
it
seems, does
a
confused and
romanticespousal of the
'people'shistory'
as a
history
of
heroic resistance
by
the
op-
pressed, regardless
of their
political
and
material
nterests.Thus the
only
difference
between the
nationalist
V
D
Savarkar's
The irdian War
of
Independence, 1857,
(1909) and Bhadra's
Four Rebels' is that,
instead of the well known figures of Nana
Saheb,
lTntia
Tope, and
Rani
Jhansi,
we
have those of
'ordinary people'
like Shah
Mal and Gonoo who, in terms of
class,
have
little in common, but who,. as
'subalterns presumably sharea common
'mentality' derived from an 'autonomous
culture'.
Subaltern social
history,
in
the final
analysis, suffers from
the same
kind
of
'politically anesthetised idealism' that the
Genoveses
note in
the
account
of liberal
history
of
slavery
n
the old
south
which,
in its
celebrationof
black cultural achieve-
ment in
slavery, "abstracts
the
slave ex-
perience almost completely from its
political conditions
of
incipient violence
and
from
that
work
experiencewhich con-
sumed
so
many
of the slaves'
waking
hours..', and, in doing so "denies the
decisive
importance
of
the
master-slave
dialectic-of the
specificity
and
historical-
ly ubiquitous form of class
struggle"
[Elizabeth
Fox-Genovese and
Eugene
D
Genovese,
'Pblitical Crisis
of
Social
History
pp
196-97].
This
retreat from
class
struggle
makes
every
act of
rebellion
by the politically
and
socially
disenfran-
chised
in
a
particular historical context
evidence
of
one
aspect
of subaltern 'men-
tality':
defiance. And
it locates the failure
of this enterprise n the other aspect
of
the same
'mentality': he contradictory
impulse f obedience
o authority.What
seems to
have little or
no
place
in
this
historiography
is
the institutions and
structures of power and economic ex-
ploitation which,
in
their very real and
bloody
exchanges
with
passive
or in-
surgent
masses,
break
bones and
spirits
equally
effectively.
Of what
political
use is
Partha Chater-
jees
assertion that
it would
be
totally
con-
trary to the subaltern historians' prQject
"to go about as though
only the dominant
culture
has
life in
history
and subaltern
consciousness eternally frozen
in its
struc-
ture
of
negation"
['Caste and
Subaltern
Consciousness Subaltern Studies
VI,
1989, pp
206-071
when the
only
comfort
he
offers
us in
his 'own
specific project-
the lessons of the
failure
of the
religious
movement of
Balaram Hadi in
the 1830s
among
the
outcaste
Hadis of
Bengal-is
of
the
presence
in
Balaram's
deviations
from
brahmanical orthodoxy of "an im-
plicit,
barely stated search for a
recogni-
tion whose
signs
lie not
outside,
but within
oneself"? ['Caste and
Subaltern Con-
sciousness'.
p
206].
And what
political
significance
can
we
possibly
find in
Sumit
Sarkar's
xcruciatinglydetailed
analysis of
the
Kalki-Avatar's
ase,
that for
one
night,
the
Chandal
(outcaste)
Prasanna had
not
only
"burst
into and
taken
over a re-
enactment
of
the
myth
by
a brahmin
sadhu and a bhadraloC
gentleman]
disci-
ple,
he
had
appropriated bits of
it, along
with fragments
from epics equally
deferential
in
intent,
to terrorise the
Doyhata bhadralok and make a
wife kick
a
husband on the forehead"
[The
Kalki-
AvatarBikrampur',
Subaltern tudies
VI,
1989, pp 52-53].
It
is not
enough for
subalternhistorians
to
prove, by
recounting
'people's
revolts',
that
the oppressed
have never liked being
oppressed,
or to show that,
when they did
not, their
deviations from the
rituals and
symbols
of
the
dominant culture contain-
ed seeds
of
'incipient'
revolt. The
primary
question, as the
Genoveses
insist, is, to
what extent did
these revolts
and devia-
tions pose a
challenge to the
ruling class?
The
struggle of the
powerless,
if
it is to
have
any political
significance, must be a
struggle
for
changing
the
structures
which
reproduce relations of
power. This re-
quires a
clear-sighted
and
rigorous
scrutiny by the rebellious forces and their
well-wishers alike of the
strengths and
weaknesses of their struggle.
The
powerless
cannot, just by virtue
of
their
indubitably
heroic struggles, become
sub-
jects
of
uncritical
admiration,
nor
can
their
cultural
achievements,
because they
are
the achievements of the
oppressed, be
idealised
without noting
their in-
adequacies. The
Genoveses
observations
on Marx in this
regard
are
to
the point
Marx, concerned with political
goals,
never
mistook
socialist
demands
for
pro-
letarian power for a celebration of
previous
working-class atternsof
life.
He
could
not
afford to: as a
great
revolutionary-
committed o
changing
he
world and raising the
working class to
power, one
of
his
major projects had to
be
precisely
a
ruthless
criticism
of
all
popularmovements nd
classes,
especially
the
working
class,
in
order
to
help
steel
it for battle.
Hence,
he
had to
view
any
attempt
to cover the
blemishes or
exag-
gerate the virtue not
only
as romantic
nonsense but as
counter-revolutionary
politics
[Elizabeth
Fox-Genovese,
Eugene
Genovese,
The
Political Crisis
of
Social
History' in The
Fruits of Merchant
Capital, p 203].
The
subaltern historian, as a
historian of
the
'politics
of
the
people',
would do bet-
ter
justice
to
this
politics,
it
seems,
if
he/she were
to
keep Marx's
purpose
in
mind.
(rhanks
to
my
son
Vivek
Chibber,
who
helped
me
articulatewhat
I
intuitively saw,
but lacked words to
express.]
INDIA-US SECURITY RELATIONS
1947-1990
Emeka
Oliajunwa
pp:viii+181 Rs.
180
An
exhaustive
treatment of the
subject
with
adequately
supportive
facts
and
figures.
Perceptive,
illuminating,
comprehensive.
Available from all
leading book
distributors/sellers,
or
direct
from:
Manager: Chanakya
Publications
F10/14
Model
Town,
Dellhi-11009.
1936
Economic
and
Political
Weekly
September
11,
1993
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