Umar Khalid | 14 May 2023 | The Telegraph

It was over a jail mulaqat with a friend a few days back that I heard about the passing away of Ranajit Guha. This is my tribute to one of the most magnificent historians of modern India who will be remembered for pioneering what came to be known as subaltern studies. At a time when the discipline of history itself is under probably the most crippling siege in our country, it is imperative that we commemorate one of its finest students. In this essay, I want to focus on just one aspect of his work and his treatment of historical sources that had a profound influence on many of us who studied social science. Readers, however, have to bear with a historian in restraint. Being in prison, I don’t have all the relevant books and articles at my disposal for proper referencing and, hence, have to rely largely on my memory.

I remember that when I first read Ranajit Guha more than a decade back, I felt as if I had finally found the words to express what I had intuitively felt for a long time — while reading newspapers and media reports — but was unable to articulate. The text that I had in my hand was “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency”, an article in which he talks about decoding different kinds of sources left behind by the British in their dealings with the numerous Adivasi and peasant uprisings in 19th-century India.

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