Subaltern Historiography

নবাব নসরত জং-এর তাওয়ারিখে ঢাকা অথবা তারিখ-ই নুসরাত জঙ্গী (১৭৯৯) থেকে শুরু করে বর্তমান সময় পর্যন্ত ঢাকা বিষয়ক বিভিন্ন শিরোনামে প্রায় তিন থেকে চার হাজার গ্রন্থ ও রচনা রয়েছে। সেই সব রচনাবলীতে প্রধানত ঢাকা শহরের উচ্চবর্গের ইতিহাস প্রতিফলিত হয়েছে। যদিও ঢাকা বিষয়ক গ্রন্থাবলীতে ইতস্তত-বিক্ষিপ্তভাবে নি¤œবর্গ সম্পর্কে কিছু তথ্য পাওয়া যায়। কলকাতা শহরের নি¤œবর্গের ইতিহাসের উপর কিছু গবেষণাধর্মী গ্রন্থ প্রকাশিত হয়েছে। কিন্তু ঢাকা শহরের উপর এ ধরনের কাজ খুবই অপ্রতুল। তবে মুগল রাজধানী ঢাকার বড় সৌভাগ্য যে, এটি বহু দেশি ও বিদেশি ঐতিহাসিকের দৃষ্টি আকর্ষণ করতে সক্ষম হয়েছে। কিন্তু তাঁদের লেখনীর বিষয়বস্তু হলো ঢাকার বাণিজ্য, শিল্প, ভূ-প্রকৃতি, খাদ্য-দ্রব্য, ঢাকা নগরের অভ্যুদয় ও পুনরুত্থান এবং বিভিন্ন ইমারত-স্থাপনার ইতিহাস। সুতরাং ঢাকা শহরের নি¤œবর্গ সম্পর্কে পূর্ণাঙ্গ কোন গ্রন্থ পাওয়া যায় না। এ অভাব দূর করার উদ্দেশ্যে ঐতিহাসিক গবেষণা পদ্ধতি ব্যবহার করে প্রাথমিক ও দ্বৈতয়িক উৎসের সহায়তায় ঢাকা শহরের নিম্নবর্গের ইতিহাস (১৮৬৪-১৯০৫) গ্রন্থটি রচনা করা হয়েছে। গ্রন্থটিতে ঢাকা পৌরসভা প্রতিষ্ঠালগ্ন থেকে ১৯০৫ সালের বঙ্গভঙ্গ পর্যন্ত বিভিন্ন পেশাজীবী মানুষের আর্থ-সামাজিক অবস্থা এবং নানা ঐতিহাসিক ঘটনাবলী লিপিবদ্ধ করা হয়েছে।

[[In English:
There are about three to four thousand books and essays on Dhaka under various titles, from the publication of Tawarikh-e-Dhaka or Tarikh-e-Nusrat Jangi (published in 1799) by Nawab Nusrat Jangi to the present time. In all those works, the history of the ruling classes of Dhaka city is mainly reflected. However, some information about the subalterns is available sporadically in the books on Dhaka. Several research books have been published on the history of the subalterns, focusing on Kolkata city. However, the history of subalterns of Dhaka city has not been widely discussed. However, the great fortune of the Mughal capital, Dhaka, has attracted the attention of many local and foreign historians. Unfortunately, their writings primarily focus on Dhaka’s trade, industry, geography, foods, and the rise and fall of Dhaka city. Therefore, no complete book is available about the subalterns of Dhaka city. To overcome this deficiency, the book History of the Subalterns of Dhaka City (1864-1905) has been written using historical research methods and with the help of primary and secondary sources. The book locates diverse professions of the subalterns and examines their socio-economic conditions and various historical facts, from Dhaka Municipality’s establishment to the Partition of Bengal in 1905.]

In the wake of post-modernist, post-structuralist, post-positivist and critical schools, there are emerging newer and enriched ways of engaging with the disciplines, revisiting the prevalent perceptions and understanding the nuances. Today, the multi-disciplinarity, subjectivity and the complexity of historical research and writing are acknowledged and thus come to forefront new ways of engaging with questions like social power and social subordination. The dialogue between cherished and silenced memories, oral and written histories and the archives have helped to address the questions comprehensively. Historiography has seen a trajectory from Missing the Dots to Connecting the Dots, via this dialogue.
The essay aims at understanding the dynamic interplay of multiple histories and examine it with a political lens. The first section talks about how democratisation of historiography, i.e. opening up of history writing to all, from the shackles of state control, has helped the discipline get a critical outlook. The second section takes into consideration the particular Indian context and the third section talks about the internetization of history and its implications. The essay further talks about various perspectives that have emerged as ―history from below followed by its significance and critical analysis.

This lucid argument over the interpretation of history challenges the Western or the elitist model of historiography and allows the recognition of narratives beyond the confines of the Western canon. Robert J.C. Young informs this debate by referring to history as ‗West's greatest myth' (Young, 2005, p. 2). The contention is that European or elitist histories assume a mythical stature hence ennobling themselves as master discourses which apparently cannot be subjected to subversion. This eurocentric dogma perpetuates the interpretation of historiography as the one ordained by the imperial empire which further disengages the subaltern records of tribals, low castes or indigenous communities from the official accounts, implying that the former are not legitimate or authentic or worth classification to begin with.

The paper provides an exhaustive overview of the development of subaltern historiography. It substantiates how there has been a progress in the field of historiography as it has evolved from being a secluded and a separatist representation of the elite into an encompassing mirror of the subaltern as a whole. The paper has addressed the disengagement of subaltern history from the official accounts, which renders the subaltern vulnerable to misrepresentation, and consequent subjugation. From Marxist to Subaltern discourse, history has transited from being a homogenous account of the elite to a multitudinous account of the
subalterns. It has also been analyzed how from Marxism to Subaltern studies, History is generally taken at its face value, especially if formulated by the elite authority. Under these circumstances, the subalterns who are
misrepresented by the elite remain a scapegoat. It is in consideration of these putative reasons the need to rectify and reclaim subaltern history is paramount

Guinean hosts viewed Liberian refugees with the same ambivalence and fascination that many held for their own children, who were embracing the consumerist ethos of Guinea's postsocialist 1990s. Loma-speaking farmers' categories for evaluating historical change and refugee comportment grew out of metaphors of embodied agency and morality. These categories challenge some aspects of both Guinean elites' and contemporary anthropologists' understandings of the meaning of post-Cold War social change. [subaltern historiography, embodiment, Guinea, West Africa, fast capitalism, postsocialism] O n December 22, 2008, Guinean president Lansana Conté died, ending almost 25 years in office. Conté's rule had begun in a coup d'état following the death in office of Guinea's first postcolonial leader, Sékou Touré. Similarly, on the morning after Conté's death, a military junta took over, headed by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, a fiery and loquacious junior officer. Many Guineans welcomed the power grab by the junta, in part because the constitutionally mandated interim leader, president of the National Assembly Aboubacar Somparé, was widely disliked and mistrusted. Somparé was the symbol of a system that Guineans almost universally considered dysfunctional and morally repugnant. In Conakry on a research sabbatical during 2008 and 2009, I challenged many of my Guinean friends about the takeover, asking, "How can you support this coup, when the outgoing regime you hate so much began in exactly the same way?" Their responses varied, but many came back to Camara's promises to reinject morality into the Guinean public sphere and the management of the state. In an interview he gave two days after seizing power, Camara said, "I could not, as a patriot, watch my country continue to get dragged down. .. . It would also have been irresponsible to leave the country in the hands of a government that was corrupt and moreover riven by internal quarrels." He described himself as "allergic to injustice," claiming, "I react spontaneously to combat it. Everyone who knows me knows that I always speak the truth, even if I have to suffer the consequences. I hate lies, hypocrisy, and ingratitude" (Seck 2009). Still, I pressed, talk was cheap, and this was the rhetoric of every junior-ranks coup, words betrayed by actions in the vast majority of such takeovers in Guinea and around the world. Many Guineans noted their own misgivings along these lines but also reminded me that Camara came from one of the small ethnic groups of Guinea's forest region, where I had lived on-and-off for 20 years and conducted my Ph.D. research. "You know that Dadis is a Forestier," one colleague said. "So, his 'yes' is yes, and his 'no' is no," she continued, quoting a positive stereotype that many Forestiers use to describe themselves and that was once considered accurate by other Guineans too. 1

Guinean hosts viewed Liberian refugees with the same ambivalence and fascination that many held for their own children, who were embracing the consumerist ethos of Guinea's postsocialist 1990s. Loma-speaking farmers' categories for evaluating historical change and refugee comportment grew out of metaphors of embodied agency and morality. These categories challenge some aspects of both Guinean elites' and contemporary anthropologists' understandings of the meaning of post-Cold War social change. [subaltern historiography, embodiment, Guinea, West Africa, fast capitalism, postsocialism] O n December 22, 2008, Guinean president Lansana Conté died, ending almost 25 years in office. Conté's rule had begun in a coup d'état following the death in office of Guinea's first postcolonial leader, Sékou Touré. Similarly, on the morning after Conté's death, a military junta took over, headed by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, a fiery and loquacious junior officer. Many Guineans welcomed the power grab by the junta, in part because the constitutionally mandated interim leader, president of the National Assembly Aboubacar Somparé, was widely disliked and mistrusted. Somparé was the symbol of a system that Guineans almost universally considered dysfunctional and morally repugnant. In Conakry on a research sabbatical during 2008 and 2009, I challenged many of my Guinean friends about the takeover, asking, "How can you support this coup, when the outgoing regime you hate so much began in exactly the same way?" Their responses varied, but many came back to Camara's promises to reinject morality into the Guinean public sphere and the management of the state. In an interview he gave two days after seizing power, Camara said, "I could not, as a patriot, watch my country continue to get dragged down. .. . It would also have been irresponsible to leave the country in the hands of a government that was corrupt and moreover riven by internal quarrels." He described himself as "allergic to injustice," claiming, "I react spontaneously to combat it. Everyone who knows me knows that I always speak the truth, even if I have to suffer the consequences. I hate lies, hypocrisy, and ingratitude" (Seck 2009). Still, I pressed, talk was cheap, and this was the rhetoric of every junior-ranks coup, words betrayed by actions in the vast majority of such takeovers in Guinea and around the world. Many Guineans noted their own misgivings along these lines but also reminded me that Camara came from one of the small ethnic groups of Guinea's forest region, where I had lived on-and-off for 20 years and conducted my Ph.D. research. "You know that Dadis is a Forestier," one colleague said. "So, his 'yes' is yes, and his 'no' is no," she continued, quoting a positive stereotype that many Forestiers use to describe themselves and that was once considered accurate by other Guineans too. 1