Category: Article

In studies of the experiences of India's poor and disenfranchised in the modern era, historians have often portrayed subalterns and the colonial state as antagonistic. Historians affiliated with the Subaltern Studies Collective were correct in their assessment that subaltern awareness existed outside from or in opposition to colonial modernity and its different institutions. They believed that genuine opposition to western social and political patterns originated in a separate subaltern domain that was unfettered by the colonial authority. That's why they zeroed in on the most spectacular instances of peasant uprising against the zamindar, sahukar and sarkar complex. The subaltern became a symbol of resistance in their hands. However, the history of colonial India is rife with examp...