Approaches to history

In-built in the surveys of this kind are, however, the constraints imposed in part by the editorial decision on the covering topics and in part by the orientation of the contributors. For example, the phrase ‘new and developing’ in the book’s objective becomes immediately contentious. The exclusion of certain thematic and geographical areas (such as science, and gender in north India) may at once be pointed out as serious shortcomings for a book on ‘approaches to (Indian) history’. Similarly, contributors’ claim of their own work being representative of recent departures in a given field can easily trigger disputes. They may be accused of rewriting the history of their fields in a way to institute their preference as a mere culmination of the most interesting views previous works have ignored or inadequately dealt with. In other words, volumes such as this can easily turn into collections of essays which express, just as the literature they review, specific ideologies about their content, structure and argumentation. This is where lays, I think, the role of the editor. Readers may be forewarned, for instance, about more precise criteria of selecting specific thematic areas as ‘new and developing’ and about other particular processes of gate-keeping to ensure the collection to contain disenchanted views of the relevant literature. Both tasks, the editor of the book under review has casted aside with a disclaimer that contributors were given ‘full freedom’ to express their views and he as the chairman of the ICHR, the commissioning institution, merely facilitated their discussion.

Unfortunately, this slight omission indicates a worrisome problem in the book, namely, the contributors have often fallen short of critically examining the genealogy of their own location vis-à-vis the literature they are surveying. This has partly contributed to the lack of awareness of how their frames of analysis have remained implicit and are tainted by time. I will support this evaluation by briefly covering two contributing essays on tribal history and ancient technology. I have chosen these two because of my own familiarity with the subjects. More discerning readers will tell if my evaluation is not valid for the rest of the essays. I will be surprised, however, with that sort of verdict.  

Archana Prasad has reviewed writings on the ‘tribal history’ by reflecting on ‘development ideologies and their associated values’ (p. 1). The choice of the ethnological and anthropological materials (she justifies it by pointing at the rarity of historians’ engagement in the theme) leads her to consider the politics of the production of ‘tribe’ in India, what may be in the shorthand called as tribalisation. Specifically, she is concerned about the emergence of tribal identities and the debates on the penetration and changing nature of ‘modern’ ‘capitalism’. To her, these processes began with colonialism (p. 1). She equals tribal history to a history of their marginalization/co-optation within what she presents as the different avatars of the regimental Indian state. It was obvious then that her periodisation would run as pre-colonial-colonial-postcolonial developmentalism-growing anti-developmentalism (p. 8), marking colonialism and developmentalism as two significant watersheds in the history of the margins.

Prasad’s portrayal of colonial era, even while duly recognizing the differentiation both within and outside the colonial apparatus, makes her reiterate it as a juncture between pre-modern and modern, and pre-capital and capital times in India. She characterizes colonialism as a perpetually arriving form of capitalist dominance in the margins. Indeed she takes colonial processes, including the exploitation of natural resources, to endorse Prabhat Patnaik’s thesis that ‘development of marginal regions is a result of colonial processes’ (p. 14). In her ‘arriving’ picture of the state, the Nehruvian panchaseel broadly appeared no different than the colonial policy insofar as its exploitation of the resources was concerned. This developmentalism during the early post-colonial stage incorporated the tribals as the ethnic in the tribe-caste continuum or in the diffusion of cultures (p. 6-7). Yet it gave rise to ‘anti-modern’ environmental movements (p. 10) since the 1980s, a trend that has, according to her, ‘conceptually influenced a lot of history writing in India’ (p. 10).

She rightly observes that the debate on whether colonialism brought in the ‘state monopoly over natural resources (p. 12) has influenced the writings on the tribals. Almost all of them, for instance, either study the resource use patterns or the rights of the dispossessed. The overwhelming focus of the subaltern historiography on their resistance to the state dominance either by spontaneous violence or reproduction of community (p. 9) should also be seen within the frame of debate. Yet Prasad’s own concerns about tribal identity (p. 14) pace Marxists’ perennial desire for ‘a larger struggle for an egalitarian order’ (p. 7) also certainly falls within the same frame. It is curious to observe that her insights into how ideology of the present shapes the research of anthropologists and historians also apply to her. Indeed, her three prescriptions for historians viz. (a) to enquire into the changing forms of capitalist domination’ – particularly through the arrival of the state in the tribal areas, (b) to investigate the community paradigm be reconsidering caste, ethnicity, gender and tribes, and (c) to analyse histories of tribal survival and resource use patterns (p. 16-17), all share the same ‘presentist’ concerns with the historiography she reviews. 

These ‘presentist’ concerns arise because of the assumption that the dynamic relationship between the Indian state and the tribalisation is critical to the understanding of the tribal history. To contrast, it may well be asked who the authors of this history are. Tribal Histories, as one would think, should have been framed rather in the terms of the historiography by the tribals: What are the tribals’ ‘texts’ of their pasts, which features make them ‘history’ of a certain kind, how are these texts reproduced as legitimate and legible interpretations of the past, and how do these histories interact with both the state-centric and relational historiographies. These questions, as fruitfully pursued in the works on the Caribbean people by Marshall Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere, and on the Meos in India by Shail Mayaram, could have freed the tribal history practitioners from the terms of the colonial and other ‘traditional’ anthropology and generated fresher perspectives on the marginalization.[1]

Shereen Ratnagar’s survey of historiography of technology in ancient India is similarly overshadowed by an uncritical awareness of his own location in relation to the historiography he surveys. His location is in the technology-in-culture-society mould (p. 59). Ratnagar argues to view technology ‘in the framework of culture and society’. While he emphasizes that we must ‘seek answers to technological issues first in technology itself’, the objective remains, as in his master Sigaut’s quote, only ‘to reconstruct cultural traditions’ (p. 61). Ratnagar thus chooses not to engage with the claims made by some historians of technology that not only culture and society are highly imprecise sites of analysis, but that they are themselves often classified, typified and periodised by technology. In other words, he does not seem to pay much attention to what the history of technology is about.[2] It is easy to forget that technology often appears central to the schemes of historical analysis: as the basis of periodisation, and as a key determinant of socio-cultural change. Technology is accorded such a major role in the historiography of the twentieth century and of the ancient period. Any mature historiography of technology needs to question this techno-centric view in order to probelmatise the conventional narratives of technology change, for which historians of technology are better equipped than cultural and social historians. Sadly, Ratnagar’s analysis is weak in its reflection on the link between technology and history.

Consider, for instance, Ratnagar’s discussion on the emergence of master craftsmen (pp. 63-65). He attributes the rise of the specialists to first the standardization, which became important for reducing costs of production as the markets grew and extended (p. 63). Immediately, in the next paragraph, he reiterates Dietrich Reuschemeyer’s view that the phenomenon was tied up with the rise of political institutions, purchasing Resuchemeyer’s argument that the masterly status could not have come into existence without the legitimacy of an external source of power (p. 63). In the first, Ratnagar takes the rise of the masters as an outcome of the increasing specialization and in the latter, as the result of the division of labour. When applied to the Harappan artifacts, he seems to favour political explanation over the commercial one (p. 67), for reasons best known to him. The point can also be inferred from the way he connects the arrival of the bronze production techniques to the long-distance trade and to the state institutions that regulated the trade (p. 68). Not only has he more conjectures here than well-attested evidence to support the explanation, but crucially, but also has no technological story about this. One is thus left wondering what did the specialization consist in: was it in organizing the production, in disciplining the labour, or, in refinement of the common skills? Similarly, the role of technology in reconfiguring the link between metallurgy and the state institutions is also not clear in Ratnagar’s survey.

Discriminating readers of the volume will also find Ratnagar’s uncritical acceptance of the ‘levels’ of technological skill equally perplexing. Specially, when they read his sympathy to the Agarias – to quote, ‘their marginalization, their humble homes and settlement patterns, the size of the working group, the mythology and ritual associated with charcoal, the furnace, and iron, the malevolence of their godlings, and the exhaustion they experience’ (p. 74) - does not prevent him to consign their technology to low ‘level’. Ratnagar here employs an ahistorical view in accordance with the IIT professors who were equally disappointed by the failure of the Agarias to demonstrate the efficacy of their technique in the labs (p. 74). Yet for some reason, he takes refuge in context-dependency theory to erect a defense against M. D. Morris’ argument that the Agaria technique was inefficient and stale. For Ratnagar, the poor efficiency of their smelting furnace can be attributed to their despicable social context of production. In contrast, a historian of technology is expected to examine, and not accept at the face value, the assumptions behind the technological levels. She could ask, for example, whether the issue of efficiency is a historical criterion relevant for the Agarias and in the production/transaction network in the period. Unaware, she would easily reproduce the pervasive relativism of the standard cultural history, as Ratnagar indeed has. 

There are some issues of copy- and proof-editing that can easily be taken care of in future revisions/reprints. For example, surname of Malinowsky occurring before the full name (p. 3), confusing double ‘and’s in a single clause (p. 17), a clumsy phrase ‘traditional anthropological traditions’ for which the example given is ‘colonial anthropology’ (p. 2), the author’s sole reference to a statement that a view accepted by ‘historians of all hues’ (p. 10), non-uniform in-text citation of year (p. 70), the unclear phrase ‘redundant As’ (p. 71), the date missing in the sentence ‘For the early furnaces, see Sasisekharan’ (p. 71).

The fault in the survey frame, namely, the contributors’ lack of critical awareness of their location vis-à-vis the literature they are reviewing, does not in any way belittle the usefulness of the volume. Students of Indian as well as South Asian historiography will surely, I hope, receive this book and future volumes of this kind well.

Yogesh Raj, Research Director (Material Transformation) Martin Chautari, Nepal (yogeshwithraj@gmail.com)

[1] Sahlins, M. 1985. Islands of History, University of Chicago: Chicago; Obeyesekere, G. 1992. The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, Princeton University Press: Princeton, N. J.; Mayaram, S. 2003. Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins, Columbia University Press: New York, Chichester.

[2] Edgerton, D. 2010. “Innovation, Technology, or History: What is the Historiography of Technology about?”, Technology and Culture 53(2): 680-697.