Ranajit Guha, one of the pioneers of the history of the History of the subalterns passed away on Friday evening.
Ranajit Guha (born 23 May 1923, in Siddhakati, Backergunje, was vastly influential in the Subaltern Studies group, and was the editor of several of the group’s early anthologies.
The main historiographical issues, addressed in Guha’s work is the colonial appropriation of the Indian past and its representation as a “highly interesting portion of British history,” which together with the force of colonial conquest added up in Guha’s terminology to a colonial expropriation of Indian history.
The theoretical influences on Guha’s work are not limited to Marxism and its many offshoots. Guha used the concept of “subaltern” to signify anyone in India who did not belong to the “elite” and therefore included peasants, workers, impoverished landlords, and others whose behavior exhibited a combination of defiance and deference to the elite.
His Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India is widely considered to be a classic.
Besides this, his founding statement in the first volume of Subaltern Studies set the agenda for the Subaltern Studies group, defining the “subaltern” as “the demographic difference between the total Indian population and all those whom we have described as the ‘elite’.
He has authored several books including A rule of property for Bengal.