20 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Hellas, Bengal was the same to the rest of India under British rule*.3 While the first comes from Susobhan Sarkar (1946), the second is from Jadunath Sarkar (1948)—the two historians who otherwise hardly ever concur on any one issue. All this is indicative of a general consensus, a consensus that carries the charge of desire of an emerging class. Handicapped as it was by the peculiar conditions of its inception and the many constraints imposed upon it, this class, that is, the celebrated bhadralok, had to perforce depend upon the colonial masters for the key for self-elaboration. 'Modern* European history appeared to the bhadralok (and to the Europeans likewise) as a grand spectacle of the journey of a stable and unified subject, a trajectory spanning over centuries and marked by signposts of progress at every turn. And not simply that; Europe, at its expansionist best, claimed to lay down the master-pattern of all history, transformed its own spurious narrative, to use a phrase of Marx, into a 'general historico-philosophical theory', whose 'supreme virtue consisted in being supra-historical'.4 Even at the initial stage, there was that irresoluble tension between the aspirations of a self-assertive class and a crippling sense of deficiency as colonial subjects among the bhadralok. To be imitative of those who thwart a full-scale absorption in the economic, political and cultural field, is certainly no mean task. In this paradoxical situation, the claims of identity and difference are so conjoined, that the dividing line between them is more often than not quite blurred. The 'renaissance' culture, confused and contradictory though it was, sought to construct an 'Indian' version of a stable and unified subject, a subject, that could arrogate the right to speak on behalf of all. The bhadralok to stake their claim to leadership, had to employ a series of strategies by which a segment of the population could be made to appear to bear the onerous charge of general welfare. To make the 'particular' invisible in the guise of the 'universal', it is necessary to sanction and at the same time to delimit a space of permissible discourse for the 'others'. In other words, the 'others', the marginal beings, must be given the opportunity to speak, but in such a way, that their 'speech' remains subjected to and be regulated by a regime of 'silence'. And as far as the others are concerned, there is one group, one very special group, that cannot but be taken into cognizance: the women. It was not for nothing that nineteenth century Bengal, transformed 'woman' into an object of enquiry, broke open the closure of always-known answers to formulate a fresh set of questions for and about her. But such a venture as this has its own risks: the woman, now a 'question', has the potential of illumining and reacting upon the many assumptions of male culture. The note of interrogation affixed to her may become so foot-loose as to traverse and take over the entire range of the discursive terrain; the restricted problematic, by a dynamic of its own, may so elaborate itself as to cause a general