PARTHA CHATTERJEE AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO INDIAN

HISTORIOGRAPHY

UNDERGRADUATE PROJECT ON LEGAL HISTORY

Submitted by

PIYAL SAHOO

Reg. No: BC0230035

TAMIL NADU NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

(A State University established by Act No. 9 of 2012)

Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu – 620 009 India

AUGUST 2024

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CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project work entitled “Partha Chatterjee and His Contribution to
Indian Historiography” is a bonafide record of the research work done by Piyal Sahoo, under
my supervision and guidance. It has not been submitted by any other University for the award
of any degree, diploma, associateship, fellowship or for any other similar recognition.

Place: Tiruchirappalli

Date: Signature of the Guide

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 DECLARATION

I, PIYAL SAHOO(BC0230035) hereby declare that this research article entitled ‘’Partha
Chatterjee and His Contribution to Indian Historiography’’ has been originally carried out by
me under the guidance and supervision of Dr. P. Kumar, Assistant Professor of History,
TNNLU. This work has not been submitted either in whole or in part of any Degree/ Diploma
at any university.

Place:Tiruchirappalli
Date: Signature of the Candidate

Countersigned
Project Guide

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 01-03

REVIEW OF LITERATURE 03-04
RESEARCH QUESTIONS 04 -04
SOURCES 04-05
METHODOLOGY 05-05
CHAPTERIZATION 05-06
CHAPTER II : Title 11-15
CHAPTER III: Title 16-20
CHAPTER IV:
CONCLUSION 21-22
BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Partha Chatterjee and His Contribution to Indian Historiography

Introduction

Professor Partha Chatterjee is a top scholar in political science and history from Asia. He has
asked important questions from the perspectives of Asia and developing countries. He has led
the Subaltern Studies movement, focusing on the politics of ordinary people.

Focusing on the history and politics of the ordinary people, particularly in South Asia,
he has shown that research from Asia can have a significant impact worldwide.Professor
Chatterjee was born in Kolkata, India in 1947. After he acquired a Ph.D.in politics at the
University of Rochester, USA, in 1972, he returned to India and began to work at the Centre
for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSS). He served as the Director there for 10 years
from 1997. 1

Partha Chatterjee is a prominent member of the Subaltern Studies group and political
science who has greatly influenced how Indian history is studied. He has played a major role
in changing the way people understand the history of colonial India. By combining different
fields of study, he has provided a detailed understanding of Indian nationalism and the role of
marginalised groups. 2

Chatterjee's ideas regarding the country and its relationship to colonisation,

modernity, and Western philosophical thought have had a significant influence on
researchers' understanding of "nation" in various contexts, even though his focus is primarily
1 “Partha chatterjee” Fukuoka Prize, fukuoka-prize.org/en/laureates/detail/ef1ff134-2673-4ff7-a70d-
9b2e55b91697.

2 Gupta, Abhijit. “Partha Chatterjee, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Bodhisattva Kar (Eds), New Cultural
Histories of India: Materiality and Practices.” Cultural History, vol. 5, no. 1, Apr. 2016, pp. 101–03..

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on Indian people and nationalism.Fundamentally, Chatterjee is enthusiastic about post-
colonization nation-building. Is it possible for nationalist thought to create an orderly
discourse while still daring to challenge the fundamentals of a globalised knowledge system?
the question he poses. (Chatterjee 42). Chatterjee's study of India's 1947 independence is
crucial to understanding this point. 3

This Research project aims to do an in-depth analysis of Chatterjee's contributions,

examining his key works and their impact on the field of historiography. Through a
comprehensive review of literature and methodological innovations, the following sections
illustrate how Chatterjee has influenced contemporary historical scholarship.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE
1.After Subaltern Studies
As an intellectual project, Subaltern Studies was perhaps overdetermined by its times. Given
today's changed contexts the tasks set out by it cannot be taken forward within the framework
and methods mobilised for it. Subaltern Studies was a product of its time; another time calls
for other projects. An exploration of what Subaltern Studies achieved, what remained
unasked and unrecognised and what has changed in the historical context to necessitate new
intellectual projects4.

2.Classes, Capital and Indian Democracy

Partha Chatterjee responds to the three comments by Shah, John and Deshpande, and
Baviskar and Sundar, on his essay "Democracy and Economic Transformation in India".5

3 Chatterjee, Partha – Postcolonial Studies. 20 Nov. 2015,

scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2015/11/20/partha-chatterjee.

4 CHATTERJEE, PARTHA. “After Subaltern Studies.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 47, no. 35, 2012,
pp. 44–49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41720086. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

5 Chatterjee, Partha. “Classes, Capital and Indian Democracy.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol.
43, no. 46, 2008, pp. 89–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40278188. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

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3.Subaltern Studies and "Capital"
Vivek Chibber's critique (Postcolonial Theory and the Spectre of Capital) of the Subaltern
Studies school deals largely with the early work of three authors — Ranajit Guha, Dipesh
Chakrabarty and Partha Chatterjee. This note critically examines Chibber's arguments. 6

4.Democracy and Economic Transformation in India

With the changes in India over the past 25 years, there is now a new dynamic logic that ties
the operations of "political society" (comprising the peasantry, artisans and petty producers in
the informal sector) with the hegemonic role of the bourgeoisie in "civil society". This logic
is provided by the requirement of reversing the effects of primitive accumulation of capital
with activities like anti-poverty programmes. This is a necessary political condition for the
continued rapid growth of corporate capital. The state, with its mechanisms of electoral
democracy, becomes the field for the political negotiation of demands for the transfer of
resources, through fiscal and other means, from the accumulation economy to programmes
aimed at providing the livelihood needs of the poor. Electoral democracy makes it
unacceptable for the government to leave the marginalised groups without the means of
labour and to fend for themselves, since this carries the risk of turning them into the
"dangerous classes".7

5.The Place of India in Postcolonial Studies: Chatterjee, Chakrabarty, Spivak

This essay delves into the central topic of postcolonial studies, which is whether or not
historically colonised or undeveloped peoples can articulate a nuanced, creative response to
modernity's institutions. The main focus of the argument is on recent academic writing about
India, emphasising its insightful perspectives for students from a variety of geographical
backgrounds. The writings of notable academics like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Partha
Chatterjee, and Dipesh Chakrabarty are analysed by providing further details on Indian
history and cultural politics. These academics offer a sophisticated perspective on the ways in

6 CHATTERJEE, PARTHA. “Subaltern Studies and ‘Capital.’” Economic and Political Weekly, vol.
48, no. 37, 2013, pp. 69–75. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23528277. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

7 Chatterjee, Partha. “Democracy and Economic Transformation in India.” Economic and Political
Weekly, vol. 43, no. 16, 2008, pp. 53–62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40277640. Accessed 7
Aug. 2024.

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which postcolonial discourse and modernity studies might benefit from the application of
Indian ideas.8

6.Transferring a Political Theory: Early Nationalist Thought in India

To understand nationalist politics in the third world, it is necessary to make an explicitly
critical study of the ideology of nationalism. Both sociological determinism and
functionalism have sought to interpret nationalist ideology by emptying it of all content. The
author's position, on the contrary, is that it is the content of nationalist ideology, its claims
about what is possible and what is legitimate, which gives specific shape to its politics. When
the political theory of the modern nation-state, which clearly shares the same discursive
premises with all of post-Enlightenment European social thought, is transferred to the arena
of nationalist thought in the colonies, what happens to the thematic and the problematic, those
essentialist typologies and the notion of the Orientals (the colonised peoples) as non-
sovereign, non-active? The answer to this question would give a crucial means of access into
the fundamental shifts in discursive practices which accompany the transference of the
political theory of nationalism to the colonial world. The complexities of this transference are
examined here by considering the writings of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay.9

7.Nation, Reason and Religion: India's Independence in International Perspective

Throughout the entire course of the history of Indian anti-colonialism, religion as faith within
the limits of morality, if not the limits of reason, had rarely impeded the cause of national
unity and may in fact have assisted its realisation at key moments of struggle. The variegated
symbols of religion as culture had enthused nationalists of many hues and colours but had
seldom embittered relations between religious communities until they were flaunted to boast
the power of majoritarian triumphalism. The conceits of unitary nationalism may well have
caused a deeper sense of alienation among those defined as minorities than the attachment to

8 Krishnan, Sanjay. “The Place of India in Postcolonial Studies: Chatterjee, Chakrabarty, Spivak.”
New Literary History, vol. 40, no. 2, 2009, pp. 265–80. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27760258. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

9 Chatterjee, Partha. “Transferring a Political Theory: Early Nationalist Thought in India.” Economic
and Political Weekly, vol. 21, no. 3, 1986, pp. 120–28. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4375224.
Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

8
diverse religions. The territorial claims of a minority-turned-nation heaped further confusion
on the furious contest over sovereignty in the dying days of the raj. Having failed to share
sovereignty in the manner of their pre-colonial forbears, late-colonial nationalist worshippers
of the centralised state ended up dividing the land. Surely godless nationalism linked to the
colonial categories of religious majorities and minorities has much to answer for.10

8.One Step outside Modernity: Caste, Identity Politics and Public Sphere
The contradictory engagement with modernity by the lower castes has an important message:
being one step outside modernity alone can guarantee them a public where the politics of
difference can articulate itself, and caste can emerge as a legitimate category of democratic
politics. Being one step outside modernity is indeed being one step ahead of modernity.11

Research Objectives

This paper focuses on analysing Partha Chatterjee's work through the lens of historical
development. A pioneer and a prominent figure, Mr. Chatterjee’s seminal work will be
anatomized in order to understand the impact of his studies on colonial and postcolonial
Historical movements. This paper also goes through Mr. Chatterjee's impact on contemporary
Indian Historiography and beyond.

Research Aim

10 Bose, Sugata. “Nation, Reason and Religion: India’s Independence in International Perspective.”
Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 33, no. 31, 1998, pp. 2090–97. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4407049. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

11 Pandian, M. S. S. “One Step Outside Modernity: Caste, Identity Politics and Public Sphere.”
Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 37, no. 18, 2002, pp. 1735–41. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4412071. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

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This Research Paper Aims to Examine Chatterjee's Role in Subaltern Studies through the lens
of Historiography. As a prominent scholar and Critique of Western-Centric Historiography
Mr. Chatterjee's work will be analysed in great detail. This Paper also focuses upon Partha
Chatterjee's Impact on contemporary Indian Historiography and Beyond.

Research Questions
1.How did Partha Chatterjee contribute Indian historiography?
2. How do conventional accounts of Indian history get challenged by Partha Chatterjee's
critique of nationalist and Colonial historiography?

Bibliography
“Partha chatterjee” Fukuoka Prize, fukuoka-prize.org/en/laureates/detail/ef1ff134-2673-4ff7-
a70d-9b2e55b91697.

Gupta, Abhijit. “Partha Chatterjee, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Bodhisattva Kar (Eds), New
Cultural Histories of India: Materiality and Practices.” Cultural History, vol. 5, no. 1, Apr.
2016, pp. 101–03.

CHATTERJEE, PARTHA. “After Subaltern Studies.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol.
47, no. 35, 2012, pp. 44–49
Krishnan, Sanjay. “The Place of India in Postcolonial Studies: Chatterjee, Chakrabarty,
Spivak.” New Literary History, vol. 40, no. 2, 2009, pp. 265–80. JSTOR

10
Chatterjee, Partha. “Classes, Capital and Indian Democracy.” Economic and Political
Weekly, vol. 43, no. 46, 2008, pp. 89–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40278188.
Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

CHATTERJEE, PARTHA. “Subaltern Studies and ‘Capital.’” Economic and Political

Weekly, vol. 48, no. 37, 2013, pp. 69–75. JSTOR.

Chatterjee, Partha. “Democracy and Economic Transformation in India.” Economic and

Political Weekly, vol. 43, no. 16, 2008, pp. 53–62. JSTOR.

Krishnan, Sanjay. “The Place of India in Postcolonial Studies: Chatterjee, Chakrabarty,

Spivak.” New Literary History, vol. 40, no. 2, 2009, pp. 265–80. JSTOR.

Chatterjee, Partha. “Transferring a Political Theory: Early Nationalist Thought in India.”

Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 21, no. 3, 1986, pp. 120–28. JSTOR.

Bose, Sugata. “Nation, Reason and Religion: India’s Independence in International

Perspective.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 33, no. 31, 1998, pp. 2090–97. JSTOR.

Pandian, M. S. S. “One Step Outside Modernity: Caste, Identity Politics and Public Sphere.”
Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 37, no. 18, 2002, pp. 1735–41. JSTOR.

11