44 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
movements even outside the temporal frame of this book needs no emphasis.
My discussion will be mainly concerned with building a critique around this theme, and certain other theoretically significant propositions related to this in the volume, especially in Partha Chatterjee's contribution.
A review of this volume by Suneet Chopra was published in Social Scientist (No 111, August 1982, p 55-63). Suneet Chopra makes a number of very useful points and gives us a revealing insight into the way in which terms and categories employed in this book deviate from Gramsci's usage and methodological precision. However, I feel that he passes by some of the more significant themes and propositions in this book such as the one pointed out above. Or, let us take another instance. While it is important to know that 'elite' is not a pejorative term with Gramsci, it is not clear whether the attack on the dominant framework of 'elitism' in the writing of the history of modern India does in any significant way get affected by the deviation in the use of the term 'elite' that Suneet Chopra highlights. After all, Gramsci's use of the term is highly unusual and therefore should not detract from the general use one makes of common language terms.
Looked at in this way, Ranajit Guha's critique of the myopic vision of elitist historiography, which views the 'Indian nation', its consciousness and nationalism as a product of the elite initiatives, emanating from British or Indian sources, does not get weakened by, let us say, his inadequate understanding of the Gramscian use of the term elite. His main point remains valid, namely, that elitism does not recognise, or minimise, the role of and the initiatives by the common people in the making of modern Indian history.
Insofar as he points out this lacuna in bourgeois historiography there need be no disagreement with him; in fact such a critique is called for. But what is singularly striking in this writing by Guha is the complete absence of recognition of any historical understanding outside the 'elitist' tradition in its various incarnations. It seems obvious to me that in his categorisation of historiography the entire tradition of Marxist historical understanding in India is being clubbed together with elitism, probably in its nationalist and neo-nationalist variants; or else, it sholud have been treated, or, at least, mentioned as a distinctive viewpoint, however inadequate its reflection in academic circles. Such a dismissive attitude is deplorable.
'Autonomous Domain'
How and where is autonomy located, or, in other words, what are taken to be the empirical roots of autonomy? Definitionally, it is a domain which, first, "neither originated from elite politics nor