Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ''Indian'' Pasts?

CHAKRABARTY

DIPESH

Postcoloniality and the Artificeof History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts? Pushthought toextremes. -Louis Althusser

I IT HAS RECENTLY

BEEN SAID in praise of the postcolonial project of

SubalternStudiesthat it demonstrates,"perhaps for the firsttime since colonization,"that "Indians are showingsustained signs of reappropriatingthe capacity to representthemselves[withinthe disciplineof history]."'As a historianwho is a member of the SubalternStudiescollective,I findthe congratulationcontained in this remark gratifyingbut premature.The purpose of thisarticleis to problematize the idea of "Indians" "representingthemselvesin history."Let us put aside forthe momentthe messyproblemsof identityinherentin a transnational enterprisesuch as SubalternStudies,where passportsand commitmentsblur the distinctionsof ethnicityin a manner thatsome would regard as characteristically postmodern.I have a more perversepropositionto argue. It is thatinsofaras the academic discourse of history-that is, "history"as a discourse produced at the institutionalsiteof theuniversity-isconcerned,"Europe" remainsthesovereign, theoreticalsubjectof all histories,includingthe ones we call "Indian," "Chinese," "Kenyan,"and so on. There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variationson a masternarrativethatcould be called "the history of Europe." In this sense, "Indian" historyitselfis in a positionof subalternity; one can onlyarticulatesubalternsubjectpositionsin the name of thishistory. While the restof thisarticlewillelaborate on thisproposition,let me enter a fewqualifications."Europe" and "India" are treatedhere as hyperrealtermsin that they refer to certain figuresof imaginationwhose geographical referents As figuresof theimaginarytheyare, of course, remainsomewhatindeterminate.2 for the momentI shall treatthemas thoughtheywere subjectto contestation,but given,reifiedcategories,opposites paired in a structureof dominationand subordination.I realize thatin treatingthemthus I leave myselfopen to the charge of nativism,nationalism,or worse, the sin of sins, nostalgia. Liberal-minded scholarswould immediatelyprotestthatany idea of a homogeneous,uncontested REPRESENTATIONS

37 * Winter1992

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"Europe" dissolves under analysis.True, butjust as the phenomenon of orientalismdoes not disappear simplybecause some of us have now attaineda critical awareness of it,similarlya certainversionof "Europe," reifiedand celebrated in the phenomenal world of everydayrelationshipsof power as the scene of the birthof the modern,continuesto dominatethediscourseof history.Analysisdoes not make it go away. That Europe worksas a silentreferentin historicalknowledgeitselfbecomes obvious in a highlyordinaryway.There are at least two everydaysymptomsof the subalternityof non-Western,third-worldhistories.Third-world historians feel a need to referto worksin European history;historiansof Europe do not feel any need to reciprocate.Whetherit is an Edward Thompson, a Le Roy Ladurie, a George Duby,a Carlo Ginzberg,a Lawrence Stone,a RobertDarnton,or a Natalie Davis-to take but a few names at random from our contemporary world-the "greats"and themodels of thehistorian'senterpriseare alwaysat least culturally"European." "They" produce theirworkin relativeignorance of nonWesternhistories,and thisdoes not seem to affectthe qualityof theirwork.This is a gesture,however,that"we" cannot return.We cannoteven affordan equality or symmetryof ignorance at thislevel withouttakingthe riskof appearing "oldfashioned"or "outdated." The problem, I may add in parenthesis,is not particularto historians.An unselfconsciousbut neverthelessblatantexample of this"inequalityof ignorance" in literarystudies,forexample, is thefollowingsentenceon Salman Rushdie from a recent texton postmodernism:"Though Saleem Sinai [of Midnight's Children] narratesin English ... his intertextsforboth writinghistoryand writingfiction are doubled: theyare, on theone hand, fromIndian legends,films,and literature and, on the other,fromthe West-The Tin Drum,Tristram Shandy,One Hundred YearsofSolitude,and so on."3 It is interestingto note how thissentenceteases out onlythose referencesthatare from"theWest."The authoris under no obligation the "Indian" allusions here to be able to name withany authorityand specificity that make Rushdie's intertexuality"doubled." This ignorance, shared and unstated,is part of the assumed compact thatmakes it "easy" to include Rushdie in English departmentofferingson postcolonialism. This problem of asymmetricignorance is not simplya matterof "cultural cringe" (to let myAustralianselfspeak) on our part or of culturalarrogance on the part of the European historian.These problems exist but can be relatively easilyaddressed. Nor do I mean to take anythingawayfromthe achievementsof the historiansI mentioned.Our footnotesbear richtestimonyto the insightswe The dominance of "Europe" have derived fromtheirknowledgeand creativity. as the subject of all historiesis a part of a much more profound theoreticalcondition under which historicalknowledge is produced in the third world. This 2

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condition ordinarilyexpresses itselfin a paradoxical manner. It is this paradox and it that I shall describe as the second everydaysymptomof our subalternity, refersto the verynature of social science pronouncementsthemselves. For generationsnow,philosophersand thinkersshaping the nature of social science have produced theoriesembracingthe entiretyof humanity.As we well know,these statementshave been produced in relative,and sometimesabsolute, ignorance of the majorityof humankind-i.e., those livingin non-Westerncultures. This in itselfis not paradoxical, for the more self-consciousof European philosophershave alwayssoughttheoreticallytojustifythisstance.The everyday paradox of third-worldsocial scienceis thatwefindthesetheories,in spiteof their inherent ignorance of "us," eminentlyuseful in understandingour societies. What allowed the modern European sages to develop such clairvoyancewith regard to societiesof whichtheywere empiricallyignorant?Whycannotwe, once again, returnthe gaze? There is an answer to thisquestion in the writingsof philosopherswho have read into European historyan entelechyof universalreason, if we regard such philosophyas the self-consciousnessof social science. Only "Europe," the argument would appear to be, is theoretically (i.e., at the level of the fundamentalcathistorical that thinking)knowable; all other historiesare matters egories shape of empirical research that fleshes out a theoreticalskeleton which is substantially "Europe." There is one version of this argument in Edmund Husserl's Vienna lecture of 1935, where he proposed that the fundamentaldifference between "oriental philosophies" (more specifically,Indian and Chinese) and "Greek-European science" (or as he added, "universallyspeaking: philosophy") was the capacity of the latterto produce "absolute theoreticalinsights,"that is and "theoria" (universalscience),whiletheformerretaineda "practical-universal," character.This "practical-universal" hence "mythical-religious," philosophywas in a to world "naive" and directed the manner,whilethe world "straightforward" presented itselfas a "thematic"to theoria,makingpossible a praxis "whose aim is to elevate mankind throughuniversalscientificreason."4 A rather similar epistemologicalproposition underlies Marx's use of categories like "bourgeois" and "prebourgeois" or "capital" and "precapital." The prefixprehere signifiesa relationshipthatis both chronologicaland theoretical. The coming of the bourgeois or capitalistsociety,Marx argues in the Grundrisse and elsewhere,gives rise for the firsttimeto a historythatcan be apprehended througha philosophical and universalcategory,"capital." Historybecomes, for knowable.All past historiesare now to be known (thethe firsttime,theoretically from the that is) vantage pointof thiscategory,thatis in termsof their oretically, differencesfromit. Things reveal theircategoricalessence onlywhen theyreach theirfullestdevelopment,or as Marx put itin thatfamousaphorismof theGrundrisse:"Human anatomycontainsthekeyto theanatomyof theape."5The category "capital,"as I have discussed elsewhere,containswithinitselfthe legal subjectof WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts?

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Marx said in thatveryHegelian first Enlightenmentthought.6Not surprisingly, chapter of Capital,vol. 1, that the secret of "capital,"the category,"cannot be of a popular deciphered untilthenotionof human equalityhas acquired thefixity To Marx's continue with words: prejudice."7 because of their Even the most abstractcategories,despitetheirvalidity-precisely . . . themselves ... a productof historical all epochs,are nevertheless abstractness-for relations.Bourgeoissocietyis themostdevelopedand themostcomplexhistoric organiwhichexpressitsrelations, thecomprehension ofits The categories zationofproduction. intothestructure and therelations also allowinsights of production of structure, thereby outofwhoseruinsand elementsitbuiltitselfup,whose all thevanishedsocialformations are carriedalongwithinit,whosemerenuanceshave partlystillunconqueredremnants withinit,etc.... The intimations of higherdevelopment developedexplicitsignificance animalspecies... canbe understood onlyafterthehigherdevelamongthesubordinate opmentis alreadyknown.The bourgeoiseconomythussuppliesthekeyto theancient.8 For "capital" or "bourgeois,"I submit,read "Europe." II Neither Marx nor Husserl spoke-not at least in the words quoted above-in a historicist spirit.In parenthesis,we should also recallhere thatMarx's vision of emancipation entailed a journey beyond the rule of capital, in fact beyond the notionofjuridicalequalitythatliberalismholds so sacred. The maxim "From each according to his abilityto each according to his need" runs quite contraryto the principle of "Equal pay for equal work,"and this is why Marx remains-the Berlin Wall notwithstanding(or not standing!)-a relevant and fundamentalcriticof both capitalismand liberalismand thuscentralto any postcolonial, postmodernprojectof writinghistory.Yet Marx's methodological/epistemologicalstatementshave not alwayssuccessfullyresistedhistoricistreadings. There has alwaysremained enough ambiguityin these statementsto make possible the emergence of "Marxist" historicalnarratives.These narrativesturn around the theme of "historicaltransition."Most modern third-worldhistories are writtenwithinproblematicsposed by thistransitionnarrative,of which the overriding(if often implicit)themes are those of development,modernization, capitalism. This tendencycan be located in our own workin theSubalternStudiesproject. My book on working-classhistorystruggleswith the problem.9Sumit Sarkar's (another colleague in the SubalternStudiesproject) Modern India, justifiably regarded as one of the best textbookson Indian historywrittenprimarilyfor Indian universities,opens withthe followingsentences: The sixtyyearsor so thatlie betweenthefoundation of theIndianNationalCongressin inAugust1947witnessed ofindependence 1885and theachievement perhapsthegreatest A transition, inourcountry's whichinmanywaysremains transition however, longhistory. 4

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thatitseemsmostconvenient and itis withthiscentralambiguity incomplete, grievously tobeginour survey.'0 What kind of a transitionwas it thatremained "grievouslyincomplete"?Sarkar hintsat the possibilityof therehavingbeen severalbynamingthree: remainedunfularousedin thecourseofthenationalstruggle So manyoftheaspirations filled-theGandhiandreamof thepeasantcomingintohisowninRam-rajya [theruleof and theidealgod-king thelegendary Ram],as muchas theleftidealsofsocialrevolution. Indiaand Pakistan(andBangladesh)wasrepeatedly to ofindependent Andas thehistory and successful ofa completebourgeoistransformation reveal,eventheproblems capitalist ofpowerof 1947.(4) werenotfullysolvedbythetransfer development Neitherthe peasant's dream of a mythicaland just kingdom,nor the Left'sideal of a social[ist]revolution,nor a "completebourgeoistransformation"-itis within these three absences, these "grievouslyincomplete"scenariosthatSarkar locates the storyof modern India. It is also witha similarreferenceto "absences"-the "failure"of a historyto keep an appointmentwithitsdestiny(once again an instanceof the "lazynative," shall we say?)-that we announced our projectof SubalternStudies: It is the studyof thishistoric failureofthenationtocometoitsown,a failuredue to the inade-

classto lead itintoa quacy[emphasisadded] of thebourgeoisieas wellas of theworking revolutionof the classic decisivevictoryover colonialismand a bourgeois-democratic nineteenth-century type... or [of the] "new democracy"[type]-it is thestudyofthisfailure thecentralproblematic whichconstitutes ofcolonialIndia.1 ofthehistoriography

The tendencyto read Indian historyin termsof a lack,an absence, or an incompletenessthattranslatesinto"inadequacy"is obviousin theseexcerpts.As a trope, however,it is an ancientone, going back to the hoarybeginningsof colonial rule in India. The Britishconquered and representedthe diversityof "Indian" pasts through a homogenizing narrativeof transitionfrom a "medieval" period to "modernity."The termshave changed withtime.The "medieval"was once called has been a later "despotic"and the "modern,""therule of law.""Feudal/capitalist" variant. When itwas firstformulatedin colonial historiesof India, thistransitionnarrativewas an unashamed celebrationof the imperialist'scapacityforviolenceand conquest. To give onlyone example among the manyavailable,Alexander Dow's History ofHindostan,firstpublished in threevolumesbetween 1770 and 1772, was of theeighteenthcenturywhen dedicated to the kingwitha candor characteristic one did not need a Michel Foucault to uncoverthe connectionbetweenviolence and knowledge: "The success of Your Majesty'sarms,"said Dow, "has laid open the East to the researches of the curious."'2 Underscoring this connection betweenviolence and modernity,Dow added: WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts?

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The BritishnationhavebecometheconquerorsofBengaland theyoughttoextendsome part of their fundamentaljurisprudence to secure theirconquest....

The sword is our

tenure.It is an absoluteconquest,and itis so consideredbytheworld.(1:cxxxviii)

This "fundamentaljurisprudence" was the "rule of law" thatcontrasted,in Dow's narrative,witha past rule thatwas "arbitrary"and "despotic."In a further gloss Dow explained that "despotism"did not referto a "governmentof mere caprice and whim,"forhe knewenough historyto knowthatthatwas not trueof India. Despotism was the opposite of Englishconstitutionalgovernment;itwas a systemwhere "the legislative,thejudicial and the executivepower [were] vested in the prince."This was the past of unfreedom.Withthe establishmentof British power,the Indian was to be made a legal subject,ruled bya governmentopen to the pressures of private property("the foundation of public prosperity,"said Dow) and public opinion, and supervised by a judiciary where "the distributers ofjustice ought to be independent of everythingbut law [as] otherwisetheofficer [thejudge] becomes a tool of oppression in the hands of despotism" (l:xcv, cl, cxl-cxli). In the nineteenthand twentiethcenturies,generationsof eliteIndian nationalistsfound theirsubjectpositions,as nationalists,withinthistransitionnarrative that, at various times and depending on one's ideology,hung the tapestryof "Indian history"between the two poles of the homologous sets of oppositions, Withinthisnarrative medieval/modern, feudal/capitalist. despotic/constitutional, shared betweenimperialistand nationalistimaginations,the "Indian" was always a figureof lack. There was always,in otherwords,room in thisstoryforcharacters who embodied, on behalf of the native, the theme of "inadequacy" or "failure."Dow's recommendationof a "rule of law" for Bengal/India came with the paradoxical assurance (to the British)thattherewas no danger of such a rule "infusing"in the natives"a spiritof freedom": To makethe nativesof the fertilesoil of Bengalfree,is beyondthe powerof political theirmanners, theverydisposition of theirinstitutions, arrangement.... Theirreligion, wouldonlybind theirminds,formthemforpassiveobedience.To givethemproperty and makethemour subjects;or if theBritish themwithstrongertiesto our interests, nationprefersthename-more ourslaves.( :cxl-cxli) We do not need to be reminded that thiswould remain the cornerstoneof imperial ideology for many years to come-subjecthood but not citizenship,as the native was never adequate to the latter-and would eventuallybecome a This was of course wherenationalistsdiffered.For strandof liberaltheoryitself.l3 Rammohun Roy as for Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay,two of India's most prominentnationalistintellectualsof the nineteenthcentury,Britishrule was a necessary period of tutelage that Indians had to undergo in order to prepare preciselyforwhatthe Britishdenied but extolledas theend of all history:citizen6

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ship and the nationstate.Years later,in 1951, an "unknown"Indian who successfullysold his "obscurity"dedicated the storyof his lifethus: ofthe To thememory BritishEmpirein India on us Whichconferred subjecthood Butwithheld citizenship; To whichyet Everyoneofus threwoutthechallenge Sum" "CivisBritanicus Because Allthatwasgoodand living Withinus Wasmade,shaped,and quickened BythesameBritishRule.'4 In nationalistversionsof thisnarrative,as ParthaChatterjeehas shown,itwas the peasants and the workers,the subalternclasses,who were givento bear the cross of "inadequacy,"for,according to thisversion,it was theywho needed to be educated out of their ignorance, parochialism,or, depending on your preference, refersto false consciousness.'5Even today the Anglo-Indian word communalism those who allegedlyfailto measure up to the "secular"ideals of citizenship. That Britishrule put in place the practices,institutions,and discourse of bourgeois individualismin the Indian soil is undeniable. Earlyexpressions-that is, before the beginningsof nationalism-of this desire to be a "legal subject" make it clear thatto Indians in the 1830s and 1840s to be a "modern individual" was to become a "European." TheLiterary Gleaner,a magazine in colonial Calcutta, ran the followingpoem in 1842, writtenin English bya Bengali schoolboyeighteen yearsof age. The poem apparentlywas inspiredbythe sightof ships leaving the coast of Bengal "forthe gloriousshores of England": Oftlikea sad birdI sigh To leavethisland,thoughmineownlanditbe; and cloudlesssky Itsgreenrobedmeads,-gayflowers Thoughpassingfair,havebutfewcharmsforme. ForI havedreamedofclimesmorebrightand free Wherevirtuedwellsand heaven-born liberty Makeseventhelowesthappy;-wheretheeye Dothsickennotto see manbendtheknee wheresciencethrives, To sordidinterest:-climes And geniusdothreceiveherguerdonmeet; Wheremanin hisall histruestglorylives, sweet: Andnature'sfaceis exquisitely ForthosefairclimesI heavetheimpatient sigh, Thereletme liveand thereletmedie.'6 WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts?

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In its echoes of Milton and seventeenth-century English radicalism, this is Madhusudan Michael of colonial a Dutt, the young pastiche.17 obviously piece of being "Eurothe impossibility Bengali author of thispoem, eventuallyrealized pean" and returnedto Bengali literatureto become one of our finestpoets. Later Indian nationalists,however,abandoned such abject desire to be "Europeans" themselves.Nationalistthoughtwas premised preciselyon the assumed universalityof the project of becoming individuals,on the assumptionthat"individual rights"and abstract"equality"were universalsthatcould findhome anywherein the world, that one could be both an "Indian" and a "citizen"at the same time. We shall soon explore some of the contradictionsof thisproject. Many of the public and privateritualsof modern individualismbecame visible in India in the nineteenthcentury.One sees this,forinstance,in the sudden flourishingin thisperiod of the four basic genres thathelp express the modern self: the novel,the biography,the autobiography,and history.18 Along withthese a came modern industry,technology,medicine, quasibourgeois (thoughcolonial) legal systemsupported by a statethatnationalismwas to take over and make its own. The transitionnarrativethat I have been discussingunderwrote,and was in turn underpinned by,these institutions.To thinkthis narrativewas to think and to thinkthe these institutionsat the apex of which sat the modern state,19 modern or the nation state was to thinka historywhose theoreticalsubject was Europe. Gandhi realized thisas earlyas 1909. Referringto the Indian nationalists'demands formore railways,modern medicine,and bourgeoislaw,he cannily remarkedin his book Hind Swarajthatthiswas to "make India English"or, as he This "Europe," as Michael put it,to have "Englishrule withouttheEnglishman."20 Madhusudan Dutt's youthfuland naive poetryshows,was of course nothingbut a piece of fictiontold to the colonized by the colonizer in the very process of fabricatingcolonial domination.21Gandhi's critiqueof this"Europe" is compromised on manypointsbyhis nationalism,and I do not intendto fetishizehis text. But I findhis gesture useful in developing the problematicof nonmetropolitan histories.

III I shall now returnto the themesof "failure,""lack,"and "inadequacy" that so ubiquitouslycharacterizethe speaking subject of "Indian" history.As in the practiceof the insurgentpeasants of colonial India, the firststep in a critical Let us begin fromwhere the traneffortmustarise froma gestureof inversion.22 where this narrative sitionnarrativeends and read "plenitude" and "creativity" has made us read "lack"and "inadequacy." According to the fable of theirconstitution,Indians today are all "citizens."

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The constitutionembraces almosta classicallyliberaldefinitionof citizenship.If the modern stateand the modern individual,the citizen,are but the two inseparable sides of the same phenomenon, as William Connolly argues in Political it would appear thatthe end of historyis in sightfor us in Theoryand Modernity, India.23This modern individual,however,whose political/publiclife is lived in citizenship,is also supposed to have an interiorized"private"selfthatpours out incessantlyin diaries,letters,autobiographies,novels,and, of course, in whatwe say to our analysts.The bourgeois individualis not born untilone discoversthe pleasures of privacy.But this is a veryspecial kind of "private"-it is, in fact,a deferred"public,"forthisbourgeois private,as JurgenHabermas has reminded us, is "alwaysalready orientedto an audience [Publikum]."24 Indian public life may mimicon paper the bourgeois legal fictionof citizenship-the fictionis usually performedas a farce in India-but what about the bourgeois privateand its history?Anyone who has triedto write"French"social the taskis.25It historywithIndian materialwould know how impossiblydifficult is not that the formof the bourgeois privatedid not come withEuropean rule. There have been, since the middle of the nineteenthcentury,Indian novels,diaries, letters,and autobiographies,but theyseldom yield picturesof an endlessly interiorizedsubject. Our autobiographies are remarkably"public" (with constructionsof public life thatare not necessarilymodern) when writtenby men, and theytell the storyof the extended familywhen writtenby women.26In any case, autobiographiesin theconfessionalmode are notablefortheirabsence. The single paragraph (out of 963 pages) thatNirad Chaudhuri spends on describing the experience of his wedding nightin the second volume of his celebrated and prize-winningautobiographyis as good an example as any other and is worth quoting at some length. I should explain that this was an arranged marriage (Bengal, 1932), and Chaudhuri was anxious lest his wifeshould not appreciate his newly acquired but unaffordablyexpensive hobby of buying records of Westernclassicalmusic.Our reading of Chaudhuri is handicapped in partbyour of his prose-there may have been at lack of knowledge of the intertextuality an imbibed for work, instance, puritanicalrevulsionagainstrevealing"too much." Yet the passage remainsa tellingexercisein the constructionof memory,forit is about what Chaudhuri "remembers"and "forgets"of his "firstnight'sexperience." He screens offintimacywithexpressionslike "I do not remember"or "I do not know how" (not to mentiontheveryFreudian "makinga clean breastof"), veil is no doubt a part of the selfthatspeaks: and thisself-constructed I wasterribly uneasyat theprospectofmeetingas wifea girlwhowasa completestranger beforeme I had nothingto say. to me,and whenshewasbroughtin ... and leftstanding she cameand satbymyside on the I sawonlya veryshysmileon herface,and timidly tothepillows,toliedown edge ofthebed. I do notknowhowafterthatbothofus drifted side byside. [Chaudhuriadds in a footnote:"Of course,fullydressed.We Hindus ...

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inclad and fullynude-to be modest,and everything considerbothextremes-fully Then the No decentmanwantshiswifetobe an allumeuse."] immodest. as grossly betwelen first wordswereexchanged.She tookup one ofmyarms,feltitand said:"Youare so thin. thatbeyond I shalltakegood careof you."I did notthankher,and I do notremember notingthewordsI evenfelttouched.The horriblesuspenseaboutEuropeanmusichad reawakenedin mymind,and I decidedto makea cleanbreastof itat once and lookthe in thefaceand beginromanceon suchtermsas were ifitwascalledfor,straight sacrifice, aftera while:"Have you listenedto any European offeredto me. I asked her timidly I tookanotherchanceand thistime music?"She shookherheadtosay"No."Nonetheless, She noddedand signified asked:"Haveyouheardthenameofa mancalledBeethoven?" So I askedyetagain:"Can youspellthe "Yes."I was reassured,butnotwhollysatisfied. name?"She said slowly:"B, E, E, T, H, 0, V,E, N." I feltveryencouraged... and [we] dozed off.27 The desire to be "modern"screamsout of everysentencein the twovolumes of Chaudhuri's autobiography.His legendaryname now stands for the cultural historyof Indo-Britishencounter.Yet in the 1500-odd pages thathe has written in English about his life,thisis the onlypassage where the narrativeof Chaudhuri'sparticipationin public lifeand literarycirclesis interruptedto make room for somethingapproaching the intimate.How do we read thistext,thisself-making of an Indian male who was second to no one in his ardor forthe public lifeof the citizen, yet who seldom, if ever, reproduced in writingthe other side of the modern citizen,theinteriorizedprivateselfunceasinglyreachingout foran audience? Public withoutprivate? Yet another instance of the "incompleteness"of in India? bourgeois transformation These questions are themselvespromptedby the transitionnarrativethatin turn situatesthe modern individual at the veryend of history.I do not wish to confer on Chaudhuri's autobiography a representativenessit may not have. Women's writings,as I have already said, are different,and scholars have just begun to explore theworldof autobiographiesin Indian history.But ifone result of European imperialismin India was to introducethe modern stateand theidea of the nation withtheirattendantdiscourse of "citizenship,"which,by the very idea of "thecitizen'srights"(i.e., "therule of law"),splitsthe figureof the modern individual into "public" and "private"parts of the self (as the young Marx once pointed out in his On theJewishQuestion),these themeshave existed-in contestation,alliance, and miscegenation-with other narrativesof the self and combind as the ultimateconstructionof munitythat do not look to the state/citizen not be as such will This disputed,but mypoint goes further.It is that sociality.28 these other constructionsof self and community,while documentable in themselves,will never enjoy the privilegeof providingthe metanarrativesor teleologies (assuming that there cannot be a narrative without at least an implicit teleology)of our histories.This is so partlybecause these narrativesoftenthemselvesbespeak an antihistoricalconsciousness;thatis,theyentailsubjectpositions

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and configurationsof memorythat challenge and undermine the subject that speaks in the name of history."History"is preciselythe site where the struggle goes on to appropriate, on behalf of the modern (my hyperrealEurope), these othercollocationsof memory. To illustratethesepropositions,I willnow discussa fragmentof thiscontested historyin whichthe modern privateand the modern individualwere embroiled in colonial India.29 IV What I presenthere are the outlines,so to speak, of a chapter in the of history bourgeois domesticityin colonial Bengal. The material-in the main textsproduced in Bengali between 1850 and 1920 forteachingwomen thatvery Victoriansubject,"domesticscience"-relates to the Bengali Hindu middle class, the bhadralokor "respectablepeople." Britishrule institutedinto Indian life the trichotomousideational divisionon whichmodern politicalstructuresrest,e.g., the state,civilsociety,and the (bourgeois) family.It was thereforenot surprising that ideas relating to bourgeois domesticity,privacy,and individualityshould come to India via Britishrule. What I want to highlighthere, however,through the example of the bhadralok,are certain cultural operations by which the "Indians" challenged and modifiedthesereceivedideas in such a wayas to put in question two fundamental tenets underlying the idea of "modernity"-the nuclear familybased on companionate marriageand the secular,historicalconstructionof time. As Meredith Borthwick,Ghulam Murshid,and other scholars have shown, the eighteenth-centuryEuropean idea of "civilization"culminated, in early India, in a full-blownimperialistcritique of Indian/Hindu nineteenth-century domestic life,which was now held to be inferiorto what became mid-Victorian The "condition of women" question in ideals of bourgeois domesticity.30 of was that critique, as were the ideas of the part nineteenth-centuryIndia "modern"individual,"freedom,""equality,"and "rights."In passages remarkable for theircombinationof egalitarianismand orientalism,James Mill's TheHistory and a of BritishIndia (1817) joined togetherthe thematicof the family/nation of "freedom": teleology in themannersof circumstances The conditionof womenis one of themostremarkable nationsuniformly thewomenas in a of uncultivated nations.... The history represents advances.... As fromwhichtheyslowlyemergeas civilisation stateof abjectslavery, . the condition of the weaker sex is gradually its . refines upon enjoyments society and terms with the the associate on till men, occupy placeofvolunequal improved, they and humiliating thanthat taryand usefulcoadjutors.A stateof dependencemorestrict whichis ordainedfortheweakersexamongtheHinduscannotbe easilyconceived.31

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As is well known,the Indian middle classes generallyfeltanswerable to this onward a movementdeveloped in charge. From the early nineteenth-century "women's conditions"and to give them to reform other (and regions) Bengal formaleducation. Much of thisdiscourse on women'seducation was emancipationistin that it spoke the language of "freedom,""equality,"and "awakening," and was stronglyinfluencedby Ruskinian ideals and idealization of bourgeois If one looks on this historyas part of the historyof the modern domesticity.32 individual in India, an interestingfeatureemerges. It is thatin thisliteratureon women'seducation certainterms,afterall, were much more vigorouslydebated than others.There was, forexample, a degree of consensus over the desirability of domestic"discipline"and "hygiene"as practicesreflectiveof a stateof moderyet another importantterm in the rhetoricof the nity,but the word freedom, as the registerof such a social consensus. It was a modern, hardly ever acted passionatelydisputed word, and we would be wrongto assume thatthe passions battleof the sexes. The word was assimireflecteda simple and straightforward lated to the nationalistneed to constructculturalboundaries thatsupposedlyseparated the "European" fromthe "Indian." The dispute over thisword was thus centralto the discursivestrategiesthroughwhicha subject positionwas created enabling the "Indian" to speak. It is this subject position that I want to discuss here in some detail. What the Bengali literatureon women's education played out was a battle between a nationalistconstructionof a cultural norm of the patriarchal,patrilocal, patrilineal,extended familyand the ideal of the patriarchal,bourgeois disnuclear familythat was implicitin the European/imperialist/universalist The course on the "freedoms"of individualism,citizenship,and civil society.33 themesof "discipline"and "order" were criticalin shaping nationalistimaginings of aestheticsand power."Discipline"was seen as the keyto the power of the colonial (i.e., modern) state,but itrequired certainproceduresforredefiningthe self. The Britishwere powerful,itwas argued, because theywere disciplined,orderly, and punctual in every detail of their lives, and this was made possible by the education of "their"women who broughtthe virtuesof disciplineinto the home. The "Indian" home, a colonial construct,now fared badly in nationalistwritings To quote a Bengali texton women'seducation from1877: on modern domesticity. The houseof anycivilisedEuropeanis liketheabode of gods.Everyhouseholdobjectis clean,setin itsproperplaceand decorated;nothingseemsuncleanor smellsfoul.... It is as if[thegoddessof] order[srinkhala, srinkhal, "order,discipline"; "chains"]had become manifest to pleasethe[human]eye.In themiddleof theroomwouldbe a coveredtable on it,whilearounditwouldbe [a few]chairsnicelyarranged witha bouquetof flowers and youwouldfeelas clean.Butentera housein ourcountry [with]everything sparkling therebyyourdestinyto makeyouatoneforall thesinsof ifyou had been transported thesenses... dustin theair,a growing heap of yourlife.[A massof] cowdungtorturing themess intothegroundand putting ashes,fliesbuzzingaround... a littleboyurinating backintohismouth.... The wholeplaceis dominatedbya stenchthatseemsto be run12

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thehouseholdobjectsare so uncleanthatthey ningfree .... Thereis no orderanywhere, evoke disgust.34 only This self-divisionof the colonial subject,the double movementof recognitionby whichitboth knowsits"present"as the siteof disorderand yetmovesaway from thisspace in desiringa disciplinethatcan onlyexistin an imaginedbut "historical" future,is a rehearsal,in the contextof the discussionof the bourgeois domestic in colonial India, of the transitionnarrativewe have encountered before. A historical constructionof temporality(medieval/modern,separated by historical time),in other words,is preciselythe axis along whichthe colonial subject splits this splitis what is history;writinghistoryis peritself.Or to put it differently, over and over this split forming again. The desire fororder and disciplinein the domesticsphere thus maybe seen as having been a correlate of the nationalist,modernizingdesire for a similar disciplinein the public sphere, thatis fora rule of law enforcedbythe state.It is beyond the scope of thispaper to pursue thispoint further,but the connection betweenpersonal disciplineand disciplinein publiclifewas to revealitselfin what the nationalistswroteabout domestichygieneand public health.The connection is recognizablymodernist,and itis whattheIndian modernshared withtheEuropean modern.35What I want to attend to, however,are the differencesbetween the two. And thisis where I turnto the otherimportantaspect of the European modern, the rhetoricof "freedom"and "equality." The argumentabout "freedom"-in the textsunder discussion-was waged around the question of the Victorianideals of the companionate marriage,that is, over the question as to whetheror not the wifeshould also be a friendto the husband. Nothing threatenedthe ideal of the Bengali/Indian extended family withinthatstructure)more thanthis (or the exalted positionof the mother-in-law idea, wrapped up in notionsof bourgeois privacy,thatthe wifewas also to be a thatthewoman was now to be a modern individual. friendor,to put itdifferently, I mustmentionhere thatthe modernindividual,who assertshis/herindividuality over the claims of thejoint or extended family,almost always appears in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Bengali literatureas an embattled figure, oftenthe subjectof ridiculeand scornin the same Bengali fictionand essaysthat otherwiseextolled the virtuesof disciplineand scientificrationalityin personal and public lives.This ironyhad manyexpressions.The mostwell-knownBengali fictionalcharacterwho representsthismoral censure of modern individualityis Nimchand Datta in Dinabandhu Mitra'splaySadhabarekadashi(1866). Nimchand, who is English-educated,quotes Shakespeare, Milton,or Locke at the slightest opportunityand uses this education arrogantlyto ignore his duties toward his extended family,findshis nemeses in alcohol and debauchery.This metonymic relationshipbetween the love of "modern"/Englisheducation (which stood for the romanticindividual in nineteenth-century Bengal) and the slipperypath of WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts?

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alcohol is suggestedin the play bya conversationbetweenNimchand and a Bengali officialof the colonial bureaucracy,a Deputy Magistrate.Nimchand's supercilious braggadocio about his command of the English language quickly and inevitablyruns to the subjectof drinks(synonymous,in middle-classBengali culture of the period, withabsolute decadence): in English,thinkin English,dreamin EnglishI read English,writeEnglish,speechify whatwouldyouliketodrink?mindyou,it'sno child'splay-nowtellme,mygoodfellow, formenand brandyforheroes.36 Claretforladies,sherry A similarconnectionbetween the modern, "free"individual and selfishness was made in the literatureon women's education. The constructionwas undisguisedly nationalist(and patriarchal).Freedomwas used to mark a difference between what was "Indian" and what was "European/English."The ultra-free woman acted like a memsahib (European woman), selfishand shameless.As Kundamala Devi, a woman writingfora women'smagazine Bamabodhini patrika,said in 1870: "Oh dear ones! If you have acquired real knowledge,then give no place behaviour.This is notbecomingin a Bengali housein yourheartto memsahib-like wife."37The idea of "true modesty"was mobilizedto build up thispictureof the "really"Bengali woman.38Writingin 1920, Indira Devi dedicated her Narirukti [A Woman Speaks]-interestingly enough, a defense of modern Bengali womanhood against criticismsby (predominantly)male writers-to generations of ideal Bengali women whom she thus described: "Unaffected by nature, of pleasant speech, untiringin theirservice[to others],obliviousof theirown pleasures, [while] moved easilyby the sufferingof others,and capable of being contentwithverylittle."39 This model of the "modern" Bengali/Indian woman-educated enough to appreciate the modern regulationsof the body and the state but yet "modest" enough to be unselfassertiveand unselfish-was tied to the debates on "freeto do dom." "Freedom" in the West,severalauthorsargued, meantjathechhachar, meant as one pleased, the rightto self-indulgence.In India, it was said, freedom freedomfromthe ego, the capacityto serveand obey voluntarily.Notice how the and slaveryhave changed positionsin the followingquote: termsfreedom oneselftoothersand todharma To be abletosubordinate acton] [duty/moral order/proper ofthesenses,arethefirst tasksofhumanfreedom.... ... tofreethesoulfromtheslavery to theparents,wifeto the That is whyin Indianfamiliesboysand girlsare subordinate thediscipleto theguru,thestudenttotheteacher. .. husbandand to theparents-in-law, ... thepeopleto theking,[andone's]dignity and prestigeto [thatof] thekingto dharma thecommunity [samaj]40 There was an ironicaltwistto thistheorizingthatneeds to be noted. Quite clearly, did notapply to thedomesticservantswho thistheoryof "freedom-in-obedience" in this literature as examples of the "truly"unfree, mentioned were sometimes the nationalistpointbeing that(European) observerscommentingon the unfree 14

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statusof Indian women often missed (so some nationalistsargued) this crucial distinctionbetweenthe housewifeand the domestic.Obviously,the servantswere not yetincluded in the India of the nationalistimagination. Thus wentthe Bengali discourseon modern domesticityin a colonial period when the rise of a civilsocietyand a quasimodern statehad already insertedthe modern questions of "public" and "private"into middle-classBengali lives. The received bourgeois ideas about domesticityand connections between the domestic and the national were modified here in two significantways. One as I have soughtto demonstrate,was to contraposethe culturalnormof strategy, the patriarchalextended familyto the bourgeois patriarchalideals of the companionate marriage,to oppose the new patriarchywitha redefinedversionof the old one(s). Thus was foughtthe idea of the modern private.The other strategy, was to mobilize,on behalfof the extended family,formsand equally significant, figurationsof collectivememorythatchallenged, albeit ambiguously,the seemingly absolute separation of "sacred" and "secular" time on which the very modern ("European") idea of historywas/isbased.41The figureof the "trulyeducated,""trulymodest,"and "trulyIndian" woman is invested,in thisdiscussionof women's education, with a sacred authorityby subordinatingthe question of domesticlifeto religiousideas of femaleauspiciousnessthatjoined the heavenly withthe mundane in a conceptualizationof timethatcould be onlyantihistorical. The trulymodern housewife,it was said, would be so auspicious as to mark the eternal return of the cosmic principle embodied in the goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of domestic well-beingby whose grace the extended family(and clan, lived and prosand hence, byextendingthe sentiment,the nation,Bharatlakshmi) are the Lakshmisof "Women in a read Thus we contemporarypamphlet: pered. in the themselves to the community.If theyundertake improve sphere of dharma and knowledge . . . there will be an automaticimprovementin [the qualityof] social life."42Lakshmi, regarded as the Hindu god Vishnu's wife by about A.D. 400, has for long been held up in popular Hinduism, and in the everyday pantheismof Hindu families,as the model of the Hindu wife,unitedin complete harmonywithher husband (and his family)throughwillfulsubmission,loyalty, When women did not followher ideals, it was said, the devotion,and chastity.43 the and (extended) family familyline were destroyedby the spiritof Alakshmi malevolentreverseof the Lakshmi principle.While and dark the (not-Lakshmi), women'seducation and the idea of disciplineas such were seldom opposed in this discourseregardingthe modern individualin colonial Bengal, theline was drawn at the point where modernityand the demand forbourgeois privacythreatened the power and the pleasures of the extended family. There is no question thatthe speakingsubjecthere is nationalistand patriarchal, employing the cliched orientalistcategories,"the East" and "the West."44 However, of importance to us are the two denials on which this particular rests:the denial, or at least contestation,of the bourgeois momentof subjectivity WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts?

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privateand, equally important,the denial of historicaltimebymakingthe family a siteiwherethe sacred and the secular blended in a perpetual reenactmentof a principlethatwas heavenlyand divine. The cultural space the antihistoricalinvoked was by no means harmonious or nonconflictual,though nationalistthoughtof necessitytriedto portrayit to be so. The antihistoricalnorms of the patriarchalextended family,for example, could only have had a contestedexistence,contestedboth by women's struggles and bythoseof the subalternclasses.But thesestrugglesdid notnecessarilyfollow any lines thatwould allow us to constructemancipatorynarrativesbyputtingthe "patriarchals"clearlyon one side and the "liberals"on the other.The historyof modern "Indian" individualityis caught up in too many contradictionsto lend itselfto such a treatment. I do not have the space here to develop the point,so I willmake do withone example. It comes fromthe autobiographyof Ramabai Ranade, the wifeof the social reformerfromthe Bombay Presidency,M. G. famous nineteenth-century Ranade. Ramabai Ranade's struggleforself-respectwas in part against the "old" patriarchalorder of the extended familyand for the "new" patriarchyof companionate marriage,whichher reform-mindedhusband saw as the mostcivilized formof the conjugal bond. In pursuitof thisideal, Ramabai began to share her husband's commitmentto public lifeand would oftentake part (in the 1880s) in public gatheringsand deliberationsof male and female social reformers.As she herselfsays: "It was at these meetingsthatI learntwhat a meetingwas and how one should conduct oneself at one."45Interestingly, however,one of the chief sources of opposition to Ramabai's effortswere (apart from men) the other women in the family.There is of course no doubt that they,her mother-in-law and her husband's sisters,spoke forthe old patriarchalextended family.But it is quite instructiveto listento theirvoices (as theycome across throughRamabai's text),fortheyalso spoke fortheirown sense of self-respectand theirown forms of struggleagainst men: You shouldnotreallygo to thesemeetings[theysaid to Ramabai] .... Even ifthemen wantyouto do thesethings,youshouldignorethem.You need notsayno: butafterall, youneed notdo it.Theywillthengiveup, outof sheerboredom.... You are outdoing eventheEuropeanwomen. Or this: Dada [Mr. of goingto meetings. It is she [Ramabai]herselfwholovesthisfrivolousness Ranade]is notat all so keenaboutit.But shouldshe nothavesomesenseof proportion of how muchthe womenshouldactuallydo? If men tellyou to do a hundredthings, womenshouldtakeup tenat themost.Afterall mendo notunderstandthesepractical likethis.... Thatis why things!... The goodwoman[inthepast]neverturnedfrivolous in a respectable thislargefamily... couldlivetogether way.... But nowit is all so different!If Dada suggestsone thing,thiswomanis preparedto do three.How can we live thenand howcan weendureall this?(84-85) withanysenseofself-respect 16

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themesof nationalism,of patriarThese voices,combiningthe contradictory chal clan-based ideology,of women's strugglesagainst men, and opposed at the same time to friendshipbetween husbands and wives, remind us of the deep ambivalences that marked the trajectoryof the modern privateand bourgeois individualityin colonial India. Yet historiansmanage, bymaneuversreminiscent of the old "dialectical"card trickcalled "negationof negation,"to deny a subject position to this voice of ambivalence. The evidence of what I have called "the denial of the bourgeois privateand of the historicalsubject"is acknowledgedbut subordinated in their accounts to the supposedly higher purpose of making Indian historylook like yetanother episode in the universaland (in theirview, the ultimatelyvictorious)march of citizenship,of the nation state,of themes of human emancipation spelled out in the course of the European Enlightenment and after.It is the figureof the citizenthatspeaks throughthese histories.And so long as thathappens, myhyperrealEurope willcontinuallyreturnto dominate the stories we tell. "The modern" will then continue to be understood, as Meaghan Morrishas so aptlyput it in discussingher own Australiancontext,"as and which is to a knownhistory, somethingwhich has alreadyhappenedelsewhere, be reproduced, mechanicallyor otherwise,witha local content."This can only leave us with a task of reproducing what Morris calls "the project of positive unoriginality."46

V Yet the "originality"-I concede thatthisis a bad term-of the idioms through which struggleshave been conducted in the Indian subcontinenthas oftenbeen in the sphere of the nonmodern. One does not have to subscribeto the ideology of clannish patriarchy,forinstance,to acknowledge thatthe metaphor of the sanctifiedand patriarchalextended familywas one of themostimportantelementsin theculturalpoliticsof Indian nationalism.In the struggleagainst Britishrule, it was frequentlythe use of thisidiom-in songs, poetry,and other formsof nationalistmobilization-that allowed "Indians" to fabricatea sense of communityand to retrieve for themselvesa subject position from which to address the British.I willillustratethiswithan example fromthe lifeof Gandhi, "the fatherof the nation,"to highlightthe politicalimportanceof this cultural move on the part of the "Indian." My example refersto the year 1946. There had been ghastlyriotsbetween the Hindus and the Muslims in Calcutta over the impending partitionof the countryinto India and Pakistan.Gandhi was in the city,fastingin protestover the behaviorof his own people. And here is how an Indian intellectualrecallsthe experience: WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"pasts?

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in theeveningand findfoodpreparedbythe Men wouldcomebackfromtheiroffices for the ready them;butsoonitwouldbe revealedthatthe family[meaning womenfolk] had notfelthungry. womenof thehomehad noteatenthewholeday.They[apparently] thewifeor themotherwouldadmitthattheycouldnotunderstand how Pressedfurther, and theycouldgo on [eating]whenGandhijiwasdyingfortheirowncrimes.Restaurants closedbytheproamusementcentresdid littlebusiness;someof themwerevoluntarily prietors .... The nerve of feelinghad been restored;the pain began to be felt .... Gan-

process.47 dhijiknewwhentostarttheredemptive

We do not have to take thisdescriptionliterally,but the nature of the communityimagined in these lines is clear. It blends, in GayatriSpivak'swords,"the feelingof communitythatbelongs to national linksand politicalorganizations" with"thatother feelingof communitywhose structuralmodel is the [clan or the extended] family."48Colonial Indian historyis replete with instances where Indians arrogated subjecthood to themselvespreciselyby mobilizing,withinthe context of "modern" institutionsand sometimeson behalf of the modernizing projectof nationalism,devices of collectivememorythatwere both antihistorical and antimodern.49This is not to deny the capacityof "Indians" to act as subjects endowed withwhatwe in the universitieswould recognizeas "a sense of history" (whatPeterBurke calls "therenaissanceof the past")but to insistat the same time thatthere were also contrarytrends,thatin the multifariousstrugglesthattook constructionsof thepastoftenprovidedvery place in colonial India, antihistorical forms of collective memory.50 powerful There is then thisdouble bind throughwhichthe subjectof "Indian" history articulatesitself.On the one hand, it is both the subjectand the object of modernity,because it stands for an assumed unitycalled the "Indian people" that is peasantry. alwayssplitintotwo-a modernizingeliteand a yet-to-be-modernized As such a splitsubject,however,it speaks fromwithina metanarrativethatcelebrates the nation state; and of thismetanarrativethe theoreticalsubjectcan only be a hyperreal"Europe," a "Europe" constructedby the tales thatboth imperialism and nationalismhave told the colonized. The mode of self-representation that the "Indian" can adopt here is what Homi Bhabha has justly called "mimetic."51Indian history,even in the most dedicated socialistor nationalist hands, remains a mimicryof a certain"modern" subject of "European" history and is bound to representa sad figureof lack and failure.The transitionnarrative willalwaysremain "grievouslyincomplete." On the other hand, maneuversare made withinthe space of the mimeticand thereforewithinthe project called "Indian" history-to representthe "difference"and the "originality"of the "Indian," and it is in thiscause thatthe antihistoricaldevices of memoryand the antihistorical"histories"of the subaltern constructionsof "mythical"kingclasses are appropriated. Thus peasant/worker finda place in textsdesignated "Indian" hisdoms and "mythical"pasts/futures torypreciselythrougha procedure thatsubordinatesthesenarrativesto the rules 18

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of evidence and to the secular,linear calendar thatthe writingof "history"must follow.The antihistorical,antimodernsubject,therefore,cannot speak itselfas "theory"withinthe knowledge procedures of the universityeven when these knowledgeproceduresacknowledgeand "document"itsexistence.Much likeSpivak's "subaltern"(or the anthropologist'speasant who can only have a quoted existencein a largerstatementthatbelongs to the anthropologistalone), thissubject can only be spoken for and spoken of by the transitionnarrativethat will alwaysultimatelyprivilegethe modern (i.e., "Europe").52 So long as one operates withinthe discourse of "history"produced at the it is not possiblesimplyto walk out of the deep institutionalsiteof the university, collusionbetween"history"and themodernizingnarrative(s)of citizenship,bourgeois public and private,and the nationstate."History"as a knowledgesystemis firmlyembedded in institutionalpracticesthat invoke the nation state at every promotions, step-witness the organizationand politicsof teaching,recruitment, and publicationin historydepartments,politicsthatsurvivethe occasional brave and heroic attemptsby individualhistoriansto liberate"history"fromthe metanarrativeof the nation state. One only has to ask, forinstance:Why is historya compulsory part of education of the modern person in all countries today withoutituntilas late as theeighteenth includingthosethatdid quite comfortably world children all over the should todayhave to come to termswith century?Why a subject called "history"when we know thatthiscompulsion is neithernatural nor ancient?53It does not take much imaginationto see thatthe reason for this lies in what European imperialismand third-worldnationalismshave achieved together:the universalizationof the nation state as the most desirable formof politicalcommunity.Nation stateshave the capacityto enforcetheirtruthgames, are part of the batteryof and universities,theircriticaldistancenotwithstanding, institutionscomplicitin this process. "Economics" and "history"are the knowledge formsthatcorrespond to the two major institutionsthatthe rise (and later universalization)of the bourgeois order has given to the world-the capitalist mode of productionand the nation state("history"speaking to the figureof the citizen).54A criticalhistorianhas no choice but to negotiatethisknowledge. She or he thereforeneeds to understand the stateon its own terms,i.e., in termsof narrativesof citizenshipand modernity.Since these themes its self-justificatory willalwaystake us back to the universalistpropositionsof "modern" (European) political philosophy-even the "practical"science of economics that now seems "natural" to our constructionsof world systemsis (theoretically)rooted in the ideas of ethics in eighteenth-century Europe55-a third-worldhistorianis condemned to knowing"Europe" as theoriginalhome of the "modern,"whereas the "European" historiandoes not share a comparable predicamentwithregard to the pasts of the majorityof humankind.Thus followsthe everydaysubalternity of non-WesternhistorieswithwhichI began thispaper. Yet the understandingthat"we" all do "European" historywithour different WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"Pasts?

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of a politicsand project and oftennon-European archivesopens up thepossibility of alliance between the dominant metropolitan histories and the subaltern peripheral pasts. Let us call this the project of provincializing"Europe," the "Europe" that modern imperialismand (third-world)nationalismhave, by their collaborativeventureand violence,made universal.Philosophically,this project must ground itselfin a radical critiqueand transcendenceof liberalism(i.e., of the bureaucraticconstructionsof citizenship,modern state,and bourgeois privacy that classical political philosophyhas produced), a ground that late Marx shares withcertainmomentsin both poststructuralist thoughtand feministphiIn I am emboldened Carole Pateman's by courageous declalosophy. particular, remarkable book The Sexual the ration-in her Contract-that veryconceptionof the modern individualbelongs to patriarchalcategoriesof thought.56

VI The project of provincializing"Europe" refersto a historythat does not yet exist; I can thereforeonly speak of it in a programmaticmanner. To forestallmisunderstanding,however,I mustspell out whatitis notwhileoutlining what it could be. To begin with,itdoes notcall fora simplistic,out-of-handrejectionof modernity,liberalvalues, universals,science,reason, grand narratives,totalizingexplanations, and so on. FredricJameson has recentlyreminded us that the easy and "a politequation oftenmade between"a philosophicalconceptionof totality" is "baleful."57What intervenesbetweenthe two is ical practiceof totalitarianism" history-contradictory, plural,and heterogeneousstruggleswhose outcomesare in accordance withschemas thatseek to never predictable,even retrospectively, naturalize and domesticatethisheterogeneity.These strugglesinclude coercion and symbolic (both on behalf of and against modernity)-physical,institutional, violence,oftendispensed withdreamy-eyedidealism-and it is thisviolence that plays a decisive role in the establishmentof meaning, in the creation of truth regimes,in deciding,as itwere,whose and which"universal"wins.As intellectuals operatingin academia, we are not neutralto these strugglesand cannot pretend to situateourselves outside of the knowledgeprocedures of our institutions. The projectof provincializing"Europe" thereforecannotbe a projectof "culturalrelativism."It cannot originatefromthe stance thatthe reason/science/uniand versalswhichhelp defineEurope as the modernare simply"culture-specific" thereforeonlybelong to the European cultures.For the pointis not thatEnlightenment rationalismis alwaysunreasonable in itselfbut rathera matterof documenting how-through what historicalprocess-its "reason," which was not alwaysself-evidentto everyone,has been made to look "obvious"farbeyond the ground where itoriginated.If a language, as has been said, is but a dialectbacked 20

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up by an army,the same could be said of the narrativesof "modernity"that, almost universallytoday,point to a certain "Europe" as the primaryhabitus of the modern. This Europe, like "the West,"is demonstrablyan imaginaryentity,but the demonstrationas such does not lessen itsappeal or power.The projectof provincializing"Europe" has to include certainotheradditional moves: 1) the recognition thatEurope's acquisitionof the adjectivemodernforitselfis a piece of global historyof whichan integralpartis the storyof European imperialism;and 2) the understandingthatthisequating of a certainversionof Europe with"modernity" is not the work of Europeans alone; third-worldnationalisms,as modernizing have been equal partnersin the process. I do not mean ideologies par excellence, to overlookthe anti-imperialmomentsin thecareersof thesenationalisms;I only underscore the point that the project of provincializing"Europe" cannot be a nationalist,nativist,or atavisticproject.In unravelingthenecessaryentanglement of history-a disciplined and institutionallyregulated form of collective memory-with the grand narrativesof "rights,""citizenship,"the nation state, "public" and "private"spheres,one cannot but problematize"India" at the same timeas one dismantles"Europe." The idea is to writeinto the historyof modernitythe ambivalences,contradictions,the use of force,and the tragediesand the ironies thatattend it. That the rhetoricand the claims of (bourgeois) equality,of citizens'rights,of selfdeterminationthrough a sovereign nation state have in many circumstances empowered marginal social groups in theirstrugglesis undeniable-this recogis played Studies.What effectively nitionis indispensableto the projectof Subaltern or celebrate the advent in that either histories down, however, implicitly explicitly of is the and violence that idea of the modern stateand the repression citizenship are as instrumentalin the victoryof the modern as is the persuasivepower of its rhetoricalstrategies.Nowhere is this irony-the undemocraticfoundationsof "democracy"-more visible than in the historyof modern medicine, public health, and personal hygiene, the discourses of which have been central in locatingthe body of the modern at the intersectionof the public and the private (as defined by,and subject to negotiationswith,the state). The triumphof this discourse,however,has alwaysbeen dependent on the mobilization,on itsbehalf, of effectivemeans of physicalcoercion. I say"always"because thiscoercionis both (i.e., historic)as wellas pandemic and quotidian. Of founoriginary/foundational dational violence, David Arnold gives a good example in a recent essay on the historyof the prison in India. The coercionof the colonial prison,Arnold shows, was integral to some of the earliest and pioneering research on the medical, dietary,and demographic statisticsof India, for the prison was where Indian Of the coercion thatconbodies were accessible to modernizinginvestigators.58 tinues in the names of the nation and modernity,a recentexample comes from the Indian campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. Two American doctors WhoSpeaksfor"Indian"pasts?

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(one of thempresumablyof "Indian" origin)who participatedin the process thus describe theiroperationsin a villageof the Ho tribein the Indian stateof Bihar: In themiddleof gentleIndiannight,an intruder burstthroughthebamboodoorof the a hut. He was underordersto breakresistance adobe vaccinator, government simple vaccination. Lakshmi awoke and scrambled tohideherSingh screaming againstsmallpox self.Her husbandleaped out of bed, grabbedan axe, and chasedtheintruderintothe MohanSingh. Outsidea squadofdoctorsand policemenquicklyoverpowered courtyard. The instanthe was pinnedto theground,a secondvaccinator jabbed smallpoxvaccine intohisarm.MohanSingh,a wiry40-year-old leaderoftheHo tribe,squirmedawayfrom theneedle,causingthevaccination sitetobleed.The government teamheldhimuntilthey had injectedenoughvaccine.... Whilethetwopolicemenrebuffed him,therestof the theentirefamily and vaccinated eachin turn.LakshmiSinghbitdeep teamoverpowered intoone doctor'shand,butto no avail.59 There is no escaping the idealism thataccompanies thisviolence. The subtitleof the articlein question unselfconsciously reproducesboththe militaryand the dogooding instinctsof the enterprise.It reads: "How an armyof samaritansdrove smallpox fromthe earth." Histories that aim to displace a hyperrealEurope from the center toward which all historicalimaginationcurrentlygravitateswill have to seek out relentlesslythisconnectionbetween violence and idealism thatlies at the heart of the process bywhichthe narrativesof citizenshipand modernitycome to finda natural home in "history."I registera fundamentaldisagreementhere witha position taken by Richard Rorty in an exchange with Jurgen Habermas. Rorty criticizesHabermas for the latter'sconviction"thatthe storyof modern philosophy is an importantpartof the storyof the democraticsocieties'attemptsat selfreassurance."60Rorty'sstatementfollowsthe practiceof manyEuropeanistswho speak of the histories of these "democratic societies" as if these were selfof the West contained historiescomplete in themselves,as if the self-fashioning were somethingthatoccurred only withinits self-assignedgeographicalboundaries. At the very least Rortyignores the role that the "colonial theater"(both external and internal)-where the theme of "freedom" as defined by modern political philosophywas constantlyinvoked in aid of the ideas of "civilization," "progress,"and latterly"development"-played in the process of engendering this "reassurance." The task, as I see it, will be to wrestleideas that legitimize the modern state and its attendantinstitutions,in order to return to political philosophy-in the same way as suspect coins returned to their owners in an Indian bazaar-its categorieswhose global currencycan no longer be taken for granted.61 And, finally-since "Europe" cannot after all be provincializedwithinthe institutionalsite of the universitywhose knowledgeprotocolswillalwaystake us back to the terrainwhere all contoursfollowthatof myhyperrealEurope-the project of provincializingEurope mustrealize withinitselfits own impossibility.

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It thereforelooks to a historythatembodies thispoliticsof despair. It will have been clear by now that this is not a call for cultural relativismor for atavistic, which nativisthistories.Nor is thisa programfora simplerejectionof modernity, would be, in many situations,politicallysuicidal. I ask for a historythatdeliberatelymakes visible,withintheverystructureof itsnarrativeforms,itsown repressive strategiesand practices,the part it plays in collusion withthe narrativesof citizenshipsin assimilatingto the projectsof the modern stateall other possibilities of human solidarity.The politicsof despair willrequire of such historythat it lays bare to its readers the reasons whysuch a predicamentis necessarilyinescapable. This is a historythatwillattemptthe impossible:to look towarditsown death by tracingthatwhichresistsand escapes the best human effortat translation across culturaland other semioticsystems,so thatthe world mayonce again be imagined as radicallyheterogeneous.This, as I have said, is impossiblewithin the knowledge protocolsof academic history,forthe globalityof academia is not independent of the globalitythatthe European modern has created. To attempt to provincializethis"Europe" is to see themodernas inevitablycontested,to write over the givenand privilegednarrativesof citizenshipothernarrativesof human connectionsthatdraw sustenancefromdreamed-up pastsand futureswhere collectivitiesare definedneitherbythe ritualsof citizenshipnor bythe nightmareof sites "tradition"that"modernity"creates.There are of course no (infra)structural where such dreams could lodge themselves.Yet theywill recur so long as the themes of citizenshipand the nation statedominate our narrativesof historical transition,forthese dreams are whatthe modern repressesin order to be.

Notes Many differentaudiences in the United States and Australiahave responded to versions of this paper and helped me with their criticisms.My benefactors are too numerous to mentionindividuallybut the followinghave been particularlyhelpful: for criticismsconveyed through Thomas the editorial board of Representations Laqueur; Benedict Anderson, Arjun Appadurai, David Arnold, Marjorie Beale, Partha Chatterjee,Natalie Davis, Nicholas Dirks,Simon During,John Foster,Ranajit Guha, JeanetteHoorn, MartinJay,JennyLee, David Lloyd, Fiona Nicoll, Gyanendra Pandey,Craig Reynolds,Joan Scott,and GayatriSpivak. And veryspecial thanksto ChristopherHealy for sharingboth the intellectualand the physicallabor thatwent into thispaper. 1. Ranajit Guha and GayatriChakravortySpivak, eds., SelectedSubalternStudies(New York, 1988); Ronald Inden, "OrientalistConstructionsof India," ModernAsianStudies 20, no. 3 (1986): 445. 2. I am indebtedtoJean Baudrillard forthetermhyperreal (see his Simulations [New York, 1983]), but myuse differsfromhis. 3. Linda Hutcheon, ThePoliticsofPostmodernism (London, 1989), 65. Who Speaks for"Indian"lPasts?

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4. Edmund Husserl, The CrisisofEuropeanSciencesand Transcendental trans. Philosophy, David Carr (Evanston, Ill., 1970), 281-85. See also Wilhelm Halbfass, India and (New York, 1988), 167-68. Europe:An Essayin Understanding 5. See the discussion in Karl Marx, Grundrisse:Foundationsof the Critiqueof Political Economy,trans. Martin Nicholas (Harmondsworth,Eng., 1973), 469-512; and in 3 vols. (Moscow, 1971), 3:593-613. Marx, Capital:A CritiqueofPoliticalEconomy, 6. See Dipesh Chakrabarty, RethinkingWorking-Class History:Bengal, 1890-1940 7. (Princeton,N.J., 1989), chap. 7. Marx, Capital,1:60. 8. Marx, Grundrisse, 105. 9. See Chakrabarty,Rethinking History, Working-Class chap. 7, in particular. 10. Sumit Sarkar,ModernIndia, 1885-1947 (Delhi, 1985), 1. Subaltern 11. Guha and Spivak,Selected Studies,43. The wordsquoted here are Guha's. But I thinktheyrepresenta sense of historiographicalresponsibilitythatis shared by all the membersof the SubalternStudies collective. 12. Alexander Dow, HistoryofHindostan,3 vols. (London, 1812-16), dedication,vol. 1. 13. See L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (New York,1964), 26-27. Indian (New York, 1989), dedi14. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, TheAutobiography ofan Unknown cation page. 15. Partha Chatterjee,NationalistThoughtand theColonialWorld:A DerivativeDiscourse? (London, 1986). 16. Mudhusudanrachanabali[Bengali] (Calcutta, 1965), 449. See also JogindranathBasu, MichaelMadhusudanDatterjibancharit [Bengali] (Calcutta, 1978), 86. 17. My understandingof thispoem has been enrichedby discussionswithMarjorie Levinson and David Bennett. 18. I am not makingthe claim thatall of these genres necessarilyemerge withbourgeois individualism.See Natalie Zemon Davis, "Fame and Secrecy: Leon Modena's Lifeas an Early Modern Autobiography,"Historyand Theory27 (1988): 103-18; and Davis, "Boundaries and Sense of Self in Sixteenth-Century France,"in Thomas C. Heller et and theSelf in Western Individualism:Autonomy, al., eds., Reconstructing Individuality, See also 53-63. Calif., 1986), Philippe Lejeune, On Autobiography, Thought(Stanford, trans.KatherineLeary (Minneapolis, 1989), 163-84. 19. See the chapteron Nehru in Chatterjee,Nationalist Thought. Works 20. M. K. Gandhi,Hindswaraj(1909), in Collected ofMahatmaGandhi,vol. 10 (Ahmedabad, 1963), 15. Studiesand British 21. See the discussion in Gauri Visvanathan,MasksofConquest:Literary Rule in India (London, 1989), 128-41, passim. in ColonialIndia (New Delhi, 22. Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspectsof PeasantInsurgency 1983), chap. 2. andModernity 23. WilliamE. Connolly,PoliticalTheory (Oxford, 1989). See also David Bennett, "Postmodernism and Vision: Ways of Seeing (at) the End of History" (forthcoming). 24. Jirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation ofthePublic Sphere:An Inquiryintoa ofBourgeoisSociety (Cambridge,Mass., 1989), 49. Category 25. See Sumit Sarkar,"Social History:Predicamentand Possibilities,"in Iqbal Khan, ed., FreshPerspective onIndia and Pakistan:EssaysonEconomics, Politics,and Culture(Oxford, 1985), 256-74. 26. For reasons of space, I shall leave thisclaim here unsubstantiated,though I hope to have an opportunityto discussitin detail elsewhere.I should qualifythe statementby

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27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

mentioningthatin the main it refersto autobiographiespublishedbetween 1850 and 1910. Once women join the public sphere in the twentiethcentury,their selffashioningtakes on differentdimensions. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, ThyHand, GreatAnarch!: India,1921-1952 (London, 1987), 35051. See Karl Marx, On theJewishQuestion,in EarlyWritings (Harmondsworth,Eng., 1975), 215-22. For a more detailed treatmentof what follows,see my paper "Colonial Rule and the Domestic Order,"to be published in David Arnold and David Hardiman, eds., SubalternStudies,vol. 8. Meredith Borthwick,The ChangingRole of Womenin Bengal,1849-1905 (Princeton, N.J., 1984); Ghulam Murshid,ReluctantDebutante:ResponseofBengaliWomentoMod1849-1905 (Rajshahi, 1983). On the historyof the word civilization, see ernisation, Lucien Febvre, "Civilisation:Evolution of a Word and a Group of Ideas," in Peter FromtheWritings ofFebvre,trans.K. Folca (London, Burke, ed., A NewKind ofHistory: 1973), 219-57. I owe thisreferenceto PeterSahlins. James Mill, TheHistoryofBritishIndia, vol. 1, ed. H. H. Wilson (London, 1840), 30910. Borthwick,ChangingRole. The classic text where this assumption has been worked up into philosophy is of course Hegel'sPhilosophy ofRight,trans.T.M. Knox (Oxford, 1967), 110-22. See also "Women and the Hegelian State," in Ellen Kennedy and Susan Joanna Hodge, Mendus, eds., Womenin Western Philosophy(Brighton,Eng., 1987), 127-58; Simon Romance, and Other RelationsBetween the During, "Rousseau's Heirs: Primitivism, Modern and the Nonmodern" (forthcoming);Joan B. Landes, Womenand thePublic Spherein theAge of theFrenchRevolution(Ithaca, N.Y., 1988); Mary Ryan, Womenin Bannersand Ballots,1825-1880 (Baltimore,1990). Public:Between vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1877), 28-29. Anon., Streesiksha, I develop this argument furtherin Dipesh Chakrabarty,"Open Space/PublicPlace: Garbage, Modernity,and India," SouthAsia (forthcoming). Dinabandhuracanabali,ed. KshetraGupta (Calcutta, 1981), 138. Borthwick,ChangingRole, 105. I discuss thisin more detail in Chakrabarty,"Colonial Rule." Indira Devi, Narirukti(Calcutta, 1920), dedication page. Deenanath Bandyopadhyaya,Nanabishayak prabandha(Calcutta, 1887), 30-31. For a as used in the colonial discourse of British genealogyof the termsslaveryand freedom in ColonialIndia India, see Gyan Prakash,BondedHistories:Genealogies ofLaborServitude 1990). (Cambridge, Peter Burke, TheRenaissanceSenseofthePast(London, 1970). Bikshuk [ChandrasekharSen], Ki holo!(Calcutta, 1876), 77. in theHindu ReligiousTraDavid Kinsley,Hindu Goddesses:VisionsoftheDivineFeminine dition(Berkeley, 1988), 19-31; Manomohan Basu, Hindu acar byabahar(Calcutta, 1873), 60; H. D. Bhattacharya,"Minor Religious Sects,"in R. C. Majumdar, ed., The and CultureoftheIndianPeople:TheAgeofImperialUnity, vol. 2 (Bombay, 1951), History 469-71; Upendranath Dhal, GoddessLakshmi:Originand Development (Delhi, 1978). The expressioneveryday was suggestedto me byGayatriChakravortySpivak pantheism (personal communication). See the chapter on Bankim in Chatterjee,Nationalist Thought. trans.KusumavatiDeshpande (Delhi, 1963), 77. Ranade: His Wife'sReminiscences,

Who Speaks for"Indian" Pasts?

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46. Meaghan Morris, "Metamorphoses at Sydney Tower,"New Formations11 (Summer 1990): 10. 47. Amiya Chakravarty,quoted in Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi'sPoliticalDiscourse(London, 1989), 163. 48. GayatriChakravortySpivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?," in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg,eds., Marxismand theInterpretation ofCulture(Urbana, Ill., 1988), 277. 49. See SubalternStudies,vols. 1-7 (Delhi, 1982-91); and Ashis Nandy,TheIntimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery (Delhi, 1983). ofSelfUnderColonialism 50. SubalternStudies,vols. 1-7, and Guha, Elementary Aspects. 51. Homi Bhabha, "Of Mimicryand Man: The Ambivalenceof Colonial Discourse," in AnnetteMichelsonet al., eds., October: TheFirstDecade,1976-1986 (Cambridge,Mass., 1987), 317-26; also Bhabha, ed., Nationand Narration(London, 1990). 52. Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Also see Spivak's interviewpublished in Socialist Review20, no. 3 (July-September1990): 81-98. 53. On the close connectionbetweenimperialistideologies and the teachingof historyin colonial India, see Ranajit Guha, An IndianHistoriography ofIndia: A Nineteenth-Century (Calcutta, 1988). Agendaand ItsImplications 54. Withoutin any way implicatingthemin the entiretyof thisargument,I may mention thatthereare parallelshere betweenmystatementand whatGyan Prakash and Nicholas Dirks have argued elsewhere. See Gyan Prakash, "WritingPost-OrientalistHistories of the Third World: Perspectivesfrom Indian Historiography,"Comparative and History32, no. 2 (April 1990): 383-408; Nicholas B. Dirks, "HisStudiesin Society of a as tory Sign the Modern,"PublicCulture2, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 25-33. 55. See Amartya Kumar Sen, Of Ethicsand Economics(Oxford, 1987). Tessa MorrisSuzuki's A HistoryofJapaneseEconomicThought(London, 1989) makes interesting reading in thisregard. I am gratefulto Gavan McCormack forbringingthisbook to myattention. 56. Carole Pateman, TheSexualContract (Stanford,Calif., 1988), 184. 57. FredricJameson, "Cognitive Mapping," in Nelson and Grossberg,Marxismand the Interpretation ofCulture,354. 58. David Arnold,"The Colonial Prison:Power,Knowledge,and Penologyin NineteenthCenturyIndia," in Arnold and Hardiman, SubalternStudies,vol. 8. I have discussed some of these issues in a Bengali article:Dipesh Chakrabarty,"Sarir,samaj, o rashtra: Oupanibeshik bharate mahamariojanasangskriti,"Anustup,1988. 59. Lawrence BrilliantwithGirija Brilliant,"Death fora KillerDisease," Quest,May/June 1978, 3. I owe thisreferenceto Paul Greenough. in RichardJ. Bernstein, 60. Richard Rorty,"Habermas and Lyotardon Postmodernity," and Habermas 169. Mass., ed., 1986), Modernity (Cambridge, 61. For an interestingand revisionistreading of Hegel in thisregard, see the exchange between Charles Taylor and Partha Chatterjee in Public Culture3, no. 1 (1990). My book Rethinking Historyattemptsa smallbeginningin thisdirection. Working-Class

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