RANAJIT GUHA

The Small Voiceof History

COLLECTED ESSAYS

Edited and with an Introduction by

PARTHA CHATTERJEE

permanent black

Contents

Editors Acknowledgements ix

Editors Introduction 1

PART I: RULES OF PROPERTY 19

1 An Administrative Blueprint of 1785 21

2 Introduction to the Burdwan District Records1788-1800 36

3 Report on an Investigation ofthe GauripurRaj Estate Archives 83

4 Rent in Kind and Money Rent in Eastern India under

Early British Rule 94

5 Graft, Greed, and Perfidy 116

6 The Agrarian History of Northern India 119

PART II: SUBALTERN HISTORIES 125

7 Neel Darpan The Image of a Peasant Revolt in aLiberal Mirror 127

8 Five Villages 184

9 On Some Aspects of the Historiography of

Colonial India 187

10 The Prose of Counter-Insurgency 194

11 The Career of an Anti-God in Heaven and on Earth 239

12 The Millenarian Space 266

vi Contents

13 Chandra's Death 271

14 The Small Voice of History 304

15 Introduction to the Subaltern Studies Reader 318

16 Writing the Past Where Generations Meet 333

17 Subaltern Studies: Projects for Our Time andTheir Convergence 346

18 Gramsci in India: Homage to a Teacher 361

PART III: T H E TWO HISTORIES

OF EMPIRE 371

19 A Conquest Foretold 373

20 The Advent of Punctuality 391

21 A Colonial City and its Time(s) 409

22 Sir William Jones 435

23 Europe and the Exotic 438

24 Not at Home in Empire 441

25 Introducing an Anthropologist among the Historians 455

26 The Authority of Vernacular Pasts 474

27 A Construction of Humanism in Colonial India 479

PART IV: THE PROMISE OF NATIONHOOD 493

28 The Mahatma and the Mob 495

29 The Movement for National Freedom in India 504

30 Nationalism Reduced to Official Nationalism' 512

31 Nationalism and the Trials of Becoming 520

32 Foreword to the 'Gita 534

33 Coping with the Excess of History 539

PART V: DEMOCRACY BETRAYED 553

34 Teen-Age Wage Slavery in India 555

35 On Torture and Culture 560

Contents vii

36 Indian Democracy: Long Dead, Now Buried37 Knowing India by its Prisons

38 Calcutta Diary

39 Two Campaigns

40 On Naming a New Aspiration

PART VI: EXILE

41 The Tartar's Cry

42 The Migrant's Time

43 The Turn44 Translating between Cultures

577598609612629

633

635644

652659