Preface

Note on Transliteration

PART 1: Colonialism in South Asia: A Dominance without Hegemony and Its Historiography

I. Conditions for a Critique of Historiography
Dominance and Its Historiographies
Containment of Historiography in a Dominant Culture
Where Does Historical Criticism Come From?
The Universalizing Tendency of Capital and Its Limitations
The General Configuration of Power in Colonial India

II. Paradoxes of Power
Idioms of Dominance and Subordination
Order and Danda
Improvement and Dharma
Obedience and Bhakti
Rightful Dissent and Dharmic Protest

III. Dominance without Hegemony: The Colonialist Moment
Overdeterminations
Colonialism as the Failure of a Universalist Project
The Fabrication of a Spurious Hegemony
The Bad Faith of Historiography

IV. Preamble to an Autocritique

PART 2: Discipline and Mobilize: Hegemony and Elite Control in Nationalist Campaigns

I. Mobilization and Hegemony
Anticipation of Power by Mobilization
A Fight for Prestige

II. Swadeshi Mobilization
Poor Nikhilesh
Caste Sanctions
Social Boycott
Liberal Politics, Traditional Bans
Swadeshi by Coercion or Consent?

III. Mobilization For Non-cooperation
Social Boycott in Non-cooperation
Gandhi's Opposition to Social Boycott
Hegemonic Claims Contested

IV. Gandhian Discipline
Discipline versus Persuasion
Two Disciplines- Elite and Subaltern
Crowd Control and Soul Control

V. Conclusion

PART 3: An Indian Historiography of India: Hegemonic Implications of a Nineteenth-Century Agenda

I. Calling on Indians to Write Their Own History

II. Historiography and the Formation of a Colonial State
Early Colonial Historiography
Three Types of Narratives
Education as an Instrument of Colonialism
The Importance of English

III. Colonialism and the Languages of the Colonized
Indigenous Languages Harnessed to the Raj
Novels and Histories
Beginnings of an Indigenous Rationalist Historiography
An Ideology of Matribhasha

IV. Historiography and the Question of Power
An Appropriated Past
The Theme of Kalamka
Bahubol and Its Objects

V. A Failed Agenda

Notes

Glossary

Index

Ranajit Guha held various research and teaching positions in India, England, the United States, and Australia before his retirement in 1988. He is the founding editor of Subaltern Studies and the author of A Rule of Property for Bengal and Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India.