Subaltern Consciousness and Historiography of Indian Rebellion of 1857

The subaltern historians' rewriting of history has two objectives: (1) the dismantling of elitist historiography by decoding biases and value judgments in records, testimonies, and narratives of the ruling-classes; and (2) the restoration to subaltern groups of their 'agency', their role in history as 'subjects', with an ideology and a political agenda of their own. While the first objective has yielded some interesting and important insights, the second has led to results which have been, at best, problematic, and, at worst, tediously neo-antiquarian and remarkably unremarkable in their banality. These problems derive from the contradictions and confusions inherent in the very concept of subalternity as a socio/political category.