Ranjit Guha fell 25 days short of becoming a centenarian, but his thoughts and work will continue to excite us for at least the next hundred years.
The most renowned historian of the subcontinent passed away yesterday, April 28, at his Austrian residence.
Guha is widely regarded as the most influential figure in Subaltern Studies and was the editor of the group’s early anthologies.
But it would be wrong to regard Guha as merely a subaltern historian or even a historian, he was a stalwart of academia who turned the perception upside down and almost single-handedly changed the way South Asian history was practiced. changed to
Briefly what were Guhas? He was the one who constantly questioned the conventional practice, status quo and even the thought process by subverting it. And above all this questioning was not a dogmatic, lifeless academic approach, rather it was always done with immense passion for humanity. In fact, Guha always thought of himself as a student of literature who became a professional historian to understand and explain society and politics.
Hence we see the dominance of literary passion and air in his writings where he explores the relationship between state, capital and personnel. It never takes away the ‘agency’ of the human being and humanity, a common practice in the neoliberal system, not only in academia but also in politics.
Guha, who moved to the UK in 1959 as a reader in history from Sussex, was inspired by the European thought process that had been taking shape over thousands of years. Was done to explain. His process went back to Europe to explain the continent with a new light. The introduction of subaltern studies turned the process of studying history upside down. It can be said that only Gramsci could make such a profound impact in the field of thought process in the last century.