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Studies scholarship today , as Florencia Mallon notes in her essay in this issue of the AHR . Recent volumes , however , pay greater attention to developing the emergence of subalternity as a discursive effect without abandoning the notion of the subaltern as a subject and agent . This perspective , amplified since Subaltern Studies III , identifies subalternity as a position of critique , as a recalcitrant difference that arises not outside but inside elite discourses to exert pressure on forces and forms that subordinate it .
The attention paid to discourse in locating the process and effects of subordination can be seen in Partha Chatterjee ' s influential Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World ( 1986 ). A study of how Indian nationalism achieved dominance , this book traces critical shifts in nationalist thought , leading to a " passive revolution " -a concept that he draws from Gramsci to interpret the achievement of Indian independence in 1947 as a mass revolution that appropriated the agency of the common people . In interpreting the shifts in nationalist thought , Chatterjee stresses the pressure exerted on the dominant discourse by the problem of representing the masses . The nationalists dealt with this problem by marginalizing certain forms of mass action and expression that run counter to the modernity-driven goals that they derived from the colonial discourse . Such a strategy secures elite dominance but not hegemony over subaltern culture and politics . His recent The Nation and Its Fragments ( 1993 ) returns once again to this theme of appropriation of subalternity , sketching how the nation was first imagined in the cultural domain and then readied for political contest by an elite that " normalized " various subaltern aspirations for community and agency in the drive to create a modern nation-state .
Investigating the process of " normalization " means a complex and deep engagement with elite and canonical texts . This , of course , is not new to Subaltern Studies . Earlier essays , most notably Guha ' s " Prose of Counter-Insurgency ," engaged and interrogated elite writings with enviable skill and imagination . But these analyses of elite texts sought to establish the presence of the subalterns as subjects of their own history . The engagement with elite themes and writings , by contrast , emphasizes the analysis of the operation of dominance as it confronted , constituted , and subordinated certain forms of culture and politics . This approach is visible in the treatment of the writings of authoritative political figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and in the analyses of the activities of the Indian National Congress-the dominant nationalist party . These strive to outline how elite nationalism rewrote history and how its rewriting was directed at both contesting colonial rule and protecting its flanks from the subalterns . 18 Another theme explored with a similar aim is the intertwined functioning of colonialism , nationalism , and " communalism " in the partition of British India into India and Pakistan-a theme that has taken on added importance with the recent resurgence of Hindu supremacists and outbreaks of Hindu-Muslim riots .' 9
18 Fine examples in this respect are Shahid Amin ' s " Gandhi as Mahatma : Gorakhpur District ,
Eastern UP , 1921-2 ," Subaltern Studies III ( Delhi , 1984 ), 1-61 ; and " Approver ' s Testimony , Judicial Discourse : The Case of Chauri Chaura ," Subaltern Studies V ( Delhi , 1987 ), 166-202 .
19 See Pandey , Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India ; and ' Gyanendra Pandey , " In
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 1994